Tony Welle

Fr. Tony Welle is the kind of priest who would rather be in the middle of things than off to the side. Social and outgoing by nature, he has a warmth that makes a parish feel less like an institution and more like a place where people actually know each other.

That instinct shows up in the small things and the big ones. When his old parish was fitting a new sound system, what he cared about most was that everyone could hear him clearly, no matter where they sat, that it would feel like he was standing right beside each person in the pew. It is a small detail, but it says a lot about how he sees the priesthood: not as speaking down to a crowd, but as being close to the people in front of him. He is a man of deep passion, for God and for his family both, and the people who know him tend to describe those two loves as the center of who he is.

Fr. Tony was born in Minnesota and raised in Bismarck, North Dakota, the youngest of six children. He studied business at Minnesota State University before the priesthood called him, and his seminary years even took him to Jerusalem for a year of Scripture and archaeology, a season that left him with a lasting love for the Holy Land. He moved to Florida in 1996, entered the seminary for the Diocese of Orlando, and was ordained in 2007. He spent roughly a decade at Holy Name of Jesus in Indialantic, returned home to North Dakota for a few years, and eventually came to St. Luke Catholic Church in Barefoot Bay, where he now serves as pastor.

Away from the altar, Fr. Tony is happiest outdoors with a rod or a rifle in hand, a passionate hunter and fisherman who carries a bit of the North Dakota country he grew up in. He has led pilgrimages to the Holy Land and hopes to lead more when the time is right, still drawn to the places he first walked as a young seminarian, and glad, wherever he is, to be the same social, outgoing man his parish is happy to have.