October 2 Today in OPC History

L. Anthony and Kathleen Curto were married on this day in 1970. Tony served as a street preacher, pastor, regional home missionary, foreign missionary, seminary professor and missionary evangelist. Kathleen taught and administered at Christian schools , served as a pastor’s wife, missionary, a women’s retreat speaker, and seminary registrar, and most importantly helped to raised six godly children.

God blessed their years of ministry, yet when they married, no one thought they would make it. During the “counter cultural revolution” of the ‘60s, they met at a high school in Southern California. Tony was a rebellious junior from a liberal church and Kathleen, a senior, rejected her strict upper-class Catholic upbringing. They were crazy about each other and married in 1970 during Tony’s senior year. By the time Tony graduated, their first child was diagnosed as legally blind from cataracts. God used their son’s blindness to shake off Tony’s blinders to see Jesus as his only hope. In the midst of the Jesus movement, Tony professed faith on New Year’s Eve 1971, then spent the next three weeks sharing the Good News with Kathleen, who also called Christ her savior.

Tony felt called to the ministry so he studied at a Bible seminary, then started a street ministry in New York City. There he met a reformed pastor who taught him the reformed faith. He completed his bachelor’s, studied for two years at Westminster Theological Seminary, then earned his Master of Divinity and later his Doctor of Ministry at Westminster Seminary California. He was ordained in 1980 and served as pastor of a church that later merged with the OPC in Costa Mesa, co-pastoring with Greg Bahnsen. In 1988, he was received into the OPC. By 1994 Tony became the first regional home missionary of the Presbytery of Southern California. Kathleen cared for their three children and earned her elementary education degree. She taught and became a Christian School principal.

Tony was called as an OPC foreign missionary to Uganda in 1995, serving both at a theological college in Mbale and later opening a mission station in primitive Karamoja. Kathleen wrote and taught Sunday school curriculum as well as developed, taught, and administered at a Christian school. Their greatest blessing was adopting three orphaned children of close friends: Douglas, Isaac, and Ivan Were. Returning to the States in 2004, Tony became missions and apologetics professor and Kathleen director of student services at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Kathleen died and went to be with the Lord in Glory on April 24, 2022.

Picture: Tony and Kathleen Curto on their wedding day.