Part 1 • A former frat boy becomes a priest...now he is a determined man seeking to serve and transcend

Father David Toups prepares the Holy Communion at Christ the King Catholic Church in Tampa,
where he tends 10,000 parishioners. His parish has a school with 500 students. As pastor, he's a
 seven-day-a-week CEO with a $2 million budget. Every year there are almost 200 First Communions,
130 baptisms and 70 funerals. Meditation is his salvation.

from tampabay.com

First of a two part series about a young pastor in Florida named Father David Toups. Father Toups is the pastor of a 10,000 member parish in Tampa with a $2 million budget. Father Toups is 39, tall, dark-haired, handsome and charismatic. Father Toups attended seminary in Florida at the same time as another handsome, popular priest, nicknamed "Father Oprah" in his Miami Beach parish named Father Albert Cutié. Cutié and Toups have since written dead-opposite books about the priesthood.

Father David Toups is stuck at a light and saying the Rosary. He has one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the beads as he crawls down Dale Mabry Highway. He has night classes coming up, a sermon to start, a $2 million budget to keep in mind, First Communions to do.

He has 10,000 members of Christ the King Catholic Church in Tampa who all seem to have left urgent messages. He could be returning those calls.

But Toups fingers those beads. He has to pray. He has to recite the Liturgy of the Hours. At some point, he has to meditate. He has to concentrate, to go deep within himself, the way he did once when he spent 30 days in prayerful silence.

What Toups is doing echoes the church's stronger emphasis on prayer and spirituality in American seminaries. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued such a blueprint in 2006. It imposed higher standards for prerequisite studies in the humanities and philosophy and ordered a deeper focus on interior prayer, on skills and behaviors to live celibate lives.

After decades of crisis and scandal in the priesthood, Toups is fully aware that his every action is scrutinized. Just Thursday, the Diocese of St. Petersburg confirmed a settlement of $75,000 paid to a man who claimed he was sexually abused by a monsignor who worked at Christ the King Church in 1980.

Today, Toups is an anomaly in a denomination damaged by scandal, starved for young pastors. He is 39, tall, dark-haired, handsome and charismatic.

In leading Christ the King Church, he has to be perfect.


"There's no option," Toups says, "but to be holy priests."

Toups attended seminary in Florida at the same time Father Albert Cutié did. Cutié was another handsome, popular priest, nicknamed "Father Oprah" in his Miami Beach parish. Toups and Cutié have since written dead-opposite books about the priesthood.

Cutié writes about the "natural desire" in everyone to love another human being.

Toups writes about supernatural love between God and man, one that transcends everything, even sexual desire. Toups' book, Reclaiming Our Priestly Character, tells about priests struggling to define who they are in the wake of scandal. Toups sees celibacy as one issue among many.

Other issues entangle him as pastor of Christ the King Church, a giant parish that's growing. It includes a school for 500 kids. As pastor, he's a seven-day-a-week CEO with a $2 million budget. Every year there are almost 200 First Communions, 130 baptisms and 70 funerals. He has one priest helping him. They celebrate 13 Masses a week, including five on Sundays. It's a grueling pace that even the pope says jeopardizes the church.

Release from celibacy would not lessen those demands. The only way he makes it, Toups says, is complete surrender to God through prayer, not merely prayer at Mass, but interior prayer — prayer in private, while he writes checks or heats leftovers. He says the Rosary while he runs laps.

Cutié's book, Dilemma: A Priest's Struggle With Faith and Love, tells about his affair with a parishioner at his Miami Beach church — an affair that led him to leave the church, marry, have a baby and become an Anglican priest.

In his book he writes: "It isn't just about breaking a promise to the Church or committing a sin. It is more about the very real emotions and complex struggles experienced by those serving the Church as they try to do what God expects, what the institutional Church expects, and what others expect from them — no matter how unrealistic those expectations may be."

Cutié got out of the priesthood.

Toups is going deeper.

Continued in Part 2