From Boardroom to Altar: Álvaro Ferraro’s Journey from Entrepreneur to Priesthood
Álvaro Ferraro de la Puerta, a thirty-year-old businessman from Seville, has become one of Spain’s most talked-about converts in recent months. Having founded four companies before turning thirty and lived between Madrid, Amsterdam, Singapore, and Sydney, he announced in September 2025 that he was leaving behind his entrepreneurial career to enter the Seminario Mayor de Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid. His stated goal is simple yet radical: “ser cura y santo”—“to be a priest and a saint.”
“This is not a decision made overnight,” Ferraro wrote on his Instagram account. “It is something meditated and prayed over. If you trust in God, you try to listen.”¹ His choice quickly spread through Spanish media, striking a chord with many young professionals searching for meaning beyond material success.
A Life in the Marketplace
Ferraro grew up in Andalusia and studied Business Administration and Management at the Universidad de Sevilla, completing internships in Ireland and the Netherlands before settling in Madrid to launch his ventures. He founded his first company in his twenties, eventually creating four businesses in total—among them the luxury pet-accessory brand Ladran Gaucho, known for its handcrafted collars and leather goods.²
He also built a consultancy helping brands connect with influencers and led projects across Europe and Asia.³ By his late twenties, Ferraro had travelled through nine countries and achieved the kind of independence and recognition that modern culture prizes. Yet amid the success, he began to feel what he later described as “a quiet hunger that no achievement could satisfy.”
A Call at Lourdes
The turning point came during a pilgrimage to Lourdes in southern France. “There,” he told Religión en Libertad, “I felt the presence of God very clearly. I realised He was asking for everything—not just my time or effort, but my life.”⁴
That experience deepened through his involvement with Hakuna, a Eucharistic youth movement founded in Madrid after World Youth Day 2011, which encourages young Catholics to live the faith joyfully through adoration, music, and fraternity. In its prayer meetings and simple witness, Ferraro found an authenticity he had missed in business life. “God has a plan for each of us,” he told La Razón. “My dream now is not success or wealth, but to be a priest—and a saint.”⁵
The Seminario de Alcalá
In late September 2025, Ferraro entered the propedéutico course—the preparatory year of priestly formation—at the Seminario Mayor de Alcalá de Henares, located in the historic university city 35 kilometres northeast of Madrid.⁶ The seminary, situated near the Cathedral of St Justus and St Pastor (Catedral Magistral de los Santos Niños Justo y Pastor), is known for its strong emphasis on classical priestly formation, orthodoxy in doctrine, and disciplined spiritual life.
Under the direction of Rector Fr. Miguel Ángel Arribas, the seminary fosters daily Eucharistic adoration, the Liturgy of the Hours, community service, and theological study following the mind of the Church. It works closely with the Archdiocese of Madrid to prepare men for diocesan priesthood—priests who live in parishes, not monasteries, and whose vocation is to serve the local faithful through the sacraments and pastoral charity.
Ferraro’s current formation therefore does not take place in a monastery or religious order but within the diocesan structure of the Spanish Church. The year-long propedéutico, introduced following the 2016 Vatican guidelines for priestly training (Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis), helps candidates cultivate human maturity, spiritual discipline, and discernment before entering philosophical and theological studies.
The Meaning of His Decision
Ferraro’s story has been widely discussed across Spanish media—not only for its novelty but for its message. In a society that often equates worth with productivity, and happiness with possession, his decision strikes a deeply countercultural note. To leave success while still young, in full command of one’s opportunities, confounds the modern imagination. For many, it represents a quiet act of rebellion against the idol of consumerism and the illusion of self-sufficiency.
What makes Ferraro’s story compelling is not the drama of his departure from business, but the coherence of his faith. In a world driven by visible outcomes, he has chosen an unseen horizon: sanctity. The contrast between entrepreneurship and priesthood—between founding companies and forming souls—throws into relief the perennial tension between temporal achievement and eternal destiny.
1. The Renewal of Vocation
His story recalls the Gospel of the rich young man (Mt 19:16–22)—but with a different ending. Instead of turning away sorrowful, Ferraro returns to Christ and answers the call that the young man could not. He offers what the world taught him to protect: his autonomy, his initiative, his control.
By doing so, Ferraro recovers the original meaning of vocation: not a self-chosen project but a divine summons. He reminds us that the call of God is not an invitation to negotiate, but to obey. In a culture that exalts self-determination, his response is radical precisely because it refuses to compromise. His decision to enter the seminary, to submit to spiritual formation and ecclesial authority, reclaims the dignity of obedience as the highest freedom.
This renewal of vocation speaks not only to those discerning priesthood but to every Christian who struggles between the voice of God and the noise of ambition. The rich young man’s story ends in sadness; Ferraro’s, in surrender. His example shows that the true tragedy of the Gospel scene is not the Lord’s demand, but the refusal to answer it.
2. Holiness in Every Sphere
Ferraro’s journey also affirms a key truth of Catholic teaching: that sanctity is universal and attainable in every state of life. As the Second Vatican Council declared in Lumen Gentium (§40), “all the faithful of Christ, whatever their condition or state, are called by the Lord—each in his own way—to that perfect holiness whereby the Father Himself is perfect.”
This principle shines through Ferraro’s transformation. The same virtues that allowed him to build companies—discipline, foresight, innovation, courage—are now redirected toward the service of the Kingdom. His ambition is not extinguished but purified, oriented no longer to profit but to perfection. In this sense, he embodies what St Josemaría Escrivá called the sanctification of ordinary life: the realisation that one can glorify God in the marketplace as much as in the monastery, provided one acts with grace and integrity.
Yet for Ferraro, the moment came when the ordinary must give way to the extraordinary. Business, though honest, was no longer enough. What had once been a field of opportunity became a reminder of transience. His renunciation shows that holiness begins not by fleeing the world, but by seeing its limits. His shift from commerce to consecration thus marks not an abandonment of talent but its elevation: a move from entrepreneurship to apostleship.
3. Renunciation as Witness
Perhaps the most powerful aspect of Ferraro’s choice is its public witness. In an age that celebrates autonomy, consumption, and self-expression, he has chosen dependence, poverty, and silence. His life now unfolds not under spotlights but in the quiet rhythm of prayer, study, and service. This renunciation, freely embraced, exposes the false promises of modernity: that freedom means absence of limits, and that happiness comes through ownership.
Christ’s words—“Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it” (Mt 16:25)—take flesh in such decisions. The logic of the Gospel runs counter to that of the world: one must die to live, give to receive, serve to reign. Ferraro’s act of surrender thus becomes an embodied homily. By renouncing the language of profit, he speaks a different language altogether—the grammar of grace.
Renunciation, rightly understood, is not despair but declaration. It proclaims that God alone suffices; that truth, beauty, and love are more valuable than any balance sheet. His decision, like the gestures of the early martyrs and confessors, bears witness to a freedom no economic system can replicate—the freedom of one who has found the pearl of great price (Mt 13:46).
Ferraro’s choice reminds us that vocation is not nostalgia for the past but prophecy for the future. It tells a restless world that holiness remains possible, even amidst the noise of digital commerce and global ambition. His path from boardroom to altar is, ultimately, a call to rediscover the one success that endures: fidelity to Christ.
A Sign for Modern Spain
Spain, once the missionary heart of Catholic Europe, has seen decades of secularisation and cultural drift. Yet movements like Hakuna and conversions like Ferraro’s hint at a quiet renewal among young Spaniards disillusioned by relativism. In a generation accustomed to comfort, his story invites rediscovery of sacrifice, discipline, and grace.
The seminarians at Alcalá de Henares pray daily in the same city where St Ignatius of Loyola once studied and where Cervantes was born—a place steeped in the intellectual and spiritual history of Spain. For Ferraro, that setting symbolises continuity: the renewal of a once-Catholic nation through personal conversion and fidelity to Christ.
From Boardroom to Altar
As he kneels in the seminary chapel, Álvaro Ferraro embodies the ancient truth that sanctity is not the denial of the world but its redemption. The ledger on the altar, the folded jacket beside the crucifix, and the kneeling man before them—all tell the same story. Success fades; surrender endures.
His path remains in its beginning, but his example already speaks to a weary generation: that holiness is the highest ambition, and the truest freedom is obedience to God.
¹ Instagram post by Álvaro Ferraro, September 2025.
² ABC España, “El empresario sevillano que deja todo para entrar al seminario,” 25 September 2025.
³ El Español, “El joven empresario que fundó cuatro empresas y ahora quiere ser sacerdote,” 25 September 2025.
⁴ Religión en Libertad, “De empresario a seminarista: el cambio de Álvaro Ferraro tras una peregrinación a Lourdes,” 27 September 2025.
⁵ La Razón, “Del éxito empresarial al seminario: la historia de Álvaro Ferraro,” 26 September 2025.
⁶ La Voz del Sur, “Álvaro Ferraro entra en el propedéutico de Alcalá para discernir su vocación sacerdotal,” 27 September 2025.
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