Ralph DuWell

"You are very blessed to get Father Ralph." That is what parishioners say, and it does not take long to see why. Father Ralph DuWell is the kind of priest who walks with you, not ahead of you. There is something about the way he talks about the sacraments, about families, about being present in the moments that matter, that tells you this is a man who found exactly what he was looking for and never let go. He did not start out on the path to the priesthood. A Pennsylvania native raised in Florida, Father Ralph grew up in the Episcopal Church. He went to the University of Florida, worked in banking for sixteen years, and built what most people would call a solid life. But in his thirties, he felt something pulling him in a different direction. He walked into Ascension Parish in Melbourne one day, just to attend Mass. "I never left," he said. "I attended Mass, and I continued to go back." It was the Eucharist that held him. "The Eucharist is the summit of our faith," he says. "This was what I didn't have in the Episcopal Church." He came into the Catholic Church in 1988, entered St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary at age thirty-nine, and was ordained for the Diocese of Orlando in 2000. "This is a dream come true," he said at the time. Twenty-five years later, he still says the same thing. "I still believe God wanted me here. This is where I am supposed to be."

Father Ralph carries with him a piece of advice from his seminary days that says a lot about the kind of priest he is. Fr. Steve Olds once told his class, "Gentleman, when the hospital calls at 2:00 AM, don't just roll over, get up and go. It will be a moment of grace." Father Ralph says he was right. That willingness to show up is the thread that runs through his twenty-five years of ministry across Central Florida. He has served in parishes from Deltona to Orlando to Winter Haven, and in 2022 he returned to St. Timothy in Lady Lake as pastor, a parish where he had previously served and where the people already felt like family. In July 2026, he was appointed pastor of St. Mary Magdalen Catholic Church in Altamonte Springs. But ask Father Ralph what his favorite part of the priesthood is, and his answer has been the same since the beginning: walking with a family through the sacraments, from marriage to births and baptisms, birthdays and anniversaries, and finally commending them to God. "The sacraments are so important to me," he says. It is what drives him, what gets him out of bed, what makes twenty-five years feel like they passed in a heartbeat. "The message I give people is to put trust in the Lord," he says. "He is our hope. He is the one in control."