The son of Cuban immigrants, Padre Alberto is part Dear Abby, part Oprah Winfrey and one totally charismatic, devoted and busy Catholic priest.

By CHRISTOPHER SCANLAN

With one hand, Padre Alberto grips the wheel of his blue Isuzu Rodeo as he heads south on the Florida interstate. With the other hand, he punches numbers on his cell phone. It's 11 a.m., and he's supposed to be in front of the cameras at Channel 41, a Spanish-language television station in Miami, but he has just left his rectory in Pompano Beach, 35 miles away.

He learns that his assistant has already alerted the show's producers that Padre Alberto is running late, but he's more concerned about another deadline: his 1 p.m. Mass broadcast on Radio Paz (WACC-AM 830), the station he runs for the Archdiocese of Miami.

Finishing his call, he hangs up and shakes his head. "It's amazing. If you would have told me 15 years ago when I entered the seminary, 'Albert, you're going to be a parish priest, a radio director, a television personality and a columnist,' I would have said, 'You're high and on drugs.' "

But a dizzying career is reality for Father Albert R. Cutie' (pronounced koo-tee-AY), 33, a 6-footer with black hair, an apricot complexion and piercing blue eyes who is known to listeners and correspondents in Latin America and Hispanic enclaves in the United States as Padre Alberto. Cutie'is the son of Cuban immigrants, and his bilingual fluency, telegenic charisma and passion for people and faith have made him an international media star. Not since Bishop Fulton J. Sheen passed comedian Milton Berle in the rating wars of 1950s TV has a Catholic priest occupied so much prime time on the secular airwaves.

From 1998 until 2001, Cutie'hosted an afternoon talk show on Telemundo, the second-largest Spanish language network in the United States. Reruns continue to appear throughout Latin America. His televised bilingual Sunday Mass is seen around the world. He's on the radio and the Internet (www.padrealberto.net), and he writes a five-day-a-week advice column for Miami's Spanish newspaper, El Nuevo Herald. Every six weeks, he flies to the Dominican Republic to tape a talk show, Padre Alberto y sus amigos, co-produced by a Catholic and a secular channel.

But as interesting as these jobs sound, they don't define him, Cutie' says. "I'm a priest of the archdiocese of Miami. My mission is the mission of any priest: to say what needs to be said in today's world, to speak with clarity, with truth, and to try to bring people to an understanding of who God is in their life."

Even so, his personality, aptitude and boundless energy give Cutie' a rare chance to use modern technology to present his faith to the fastest-growing immigrant class in America: 35-million Hispanics, most of whom are Catholic.

Judging from a day spent in his company -- a 17-hour marathon that begins with prayers at 6 a.m. and ends after 10 p.m. -- his mission keeps him racing. Eight hours on the go with Cutie' offer a snapshot of the priest in action.

Gigi, according to her letter to Cutie"s newspaper advice column, doesn't want to live with her mother-in-law. "I don't blame her," Cutie' says, peering at his laptop screen as he composes his answer. It's 8 a.m., and he's already been at his rectory desk for two hours banging out his newspaper column, Consejos de Amigo (Advice from a Friend). He reads Gigi's letter aloud in Spanish, providing an instant translation. "They're buying a new house. The husband wants the mother to move in with them. So you can imagine Gigi's not happy."

His reply to Gigi is diplomatic, but firm: "I told them it was better if they lived on their own."

Gigi's problem is a familiar one. "In our American culture," Cutie' explains, "at 18 everybody goes to college and they move on. In the Latin culture, people stay around until they get married and sometimes they get married and they still stay around. There's a clash."

The Cutie' family fled communist Cuba and moved to Puerto Rico, where he was born in 1969. He was raised in Miami. His background gives him an uncanny ability, friends say, to bridge the Anglo and Hispanic communities.

"He has his feet grounded in both cultures," says Father John Hays, a close friend from seminary days. "He can articulate the truths of the faith to both."

Whatever language he is speaking, Cutie is articulate, affable and self-possessed -- able to preach a sermon or host a talk show without notes. He appears energized and content with his life. "I've always been the classic extrovert," he says.

He checks the spelling in his column, transmits the finished piece to the newspaper and checks his watch. "We go on the air in six minutes," he says, reaching for the day's newspapers and his breviary to prepare for Al Dia, a half-hour radio chat he hosts five mornings a week from the rectory.

Audio equipment has been part of his life since he was a 12-year-old disc jockey with the moniker DJ Albert who played for weddings, school dances and bar mitzvahs. "I love technical things," he says. "If I weren't a priest I'd probably be a sound engineer."

At 8:30 a.m., he leans into the microphone, greeting his listeners. "Muy pero muy buenos dias amigos," he says. "Como estan ustedes?" For 30 minutes he breezily discusses the day's headlines and reminds his audience that it's the feast of St. James. At peak hours, the station draws 100,000 listeners, immigrants from "practically every country in Latin America," he says. "Radio Paz is their connection to their places of origin, their faith and their traditions."

Cutie' once envisioned having a family, but while he was in high school, he says, "I started meeting young priests who impressed me as very happy people and people who produced something worthwhile." At age 18, he entered the seminary. After his ordination as a diocesan priest in 1995, he served two other Florida parishes before becoming administrator of San Isidro Church in May 2002.

Cutie' signs off the radio and heads to San Isidro. He checks in with a locksmith consolidating the parish keys, the crew repairing the rectory's leaky roof ("These are parts of priests' lives that people don't know."), and stops to chat with a young man who's leaving to enter the seminary.

Whether it's as a talk show host or Latino Dear Abby, Cutie' draws his credibility from a Church-centered Hispanic culture. "People don't go to therapy in Latin America," he says. "They go to the priest."

What El Nuevo Herald's readers get, says Gloria Leal, his editor, is Cutie"s brand of "compassion and no-nonsense attitude." In a recent column, his advice to a woman in an extramarital affair was blunt: "Everyone has a right to be happy. No one has the right to destroy a marriage."

"Life is not about instant satisfaction," he says. "It's about getting up every day and trying to be a better person. God's not finished with any of us yet. If you're struggling, welcome to the club."

Billboards flank the Palmetto Expressway under darkening skies as Cutie', behind schedule for his TV taping and radio Mass, approaches Miami. The nonstop stream of commercialism provides a backdrop for an impassioned mini-sermon from him. "They're making big money selling mediocre messages," Cutie' says. "We (the Church) have got the best message in the world and we don't know how to sell it. Talking in street terms, the Church stinks at marketing.

"We don't have priests who can speak to cameras," he continues. "We don't have priests who can speak into microphones without being afraid or without using the same monotonous tone that they use in their sermons. You can't speak to the world today in that tone. It doesn't work.

"It's a tricky thing," he says of evangelism, "but it's not foreign to the Church. St. Paul was a marketer of the faith in the first century. I'm convinced that if St. Paul had satellite and TV cameras and all that, boy, then he'd be there like a bear."

Dodging rain puddles, Cutie' ducks into the Channel 41 television studios for his guest appearance on Puente de Amor (Bridge of Love), which unites long-lost loved ones. By 12:53 p.m., he's back on the highway, racing to the station for Mass. He calls ahead and arranges for the noon show to stay on the air until he arrives.

Cutie' wasn't always sure about accepting a role in the media. He was a rookie parish priest in 1998 when Telemundo launched a nationwide talent hunt for a new program that would eventually become the Padre Alberto show. Nely Gala'n, the executive who conceived the idea, thought, What is a talk show but a secular version of Confession? And who better to host it, especially for a Hispanic audience, than a priest? Producers interviewed 500 Spanish-speaking clerics before selecting Cutie', but he wasn't sold on the idea at first.

"I'm not sure this is what God wants," he recalls telling Gala'n. "If God wants it I'll do it. But if God doesn't want it, I want it less." He got permission from the Church, which received an honorarium for each show filmed.

On Sept. 27, 1998, the Padre Alberto show faced off against Cristina, the reigning talk show queen on a rival channel. The format and themes were familiar -- truculent teens, troubled spouses, conjoined twins, infidelity, incest -- except the host of Padre Alberto wore a clerical suit and led the audience in prayer before the cameras rolled. Aided by psychologists and other experts, Cutie' encouraged reconciliation, not rage. There was no chair-throwing, and Cutie' tried to avoid preaching. "You want to hear me preach," he says, "come to Mass."

Cutie' kept his day job at the parish and taped six shows a week. It was a killer schedule, made worthwhile by compliments like the one from a Jesuit in the Dominican Republic: "He said to me, 'Father, the best thing your show has done for the people here is that there are a lot of issues that they would never talk with a priest about. And ever since they saw you they say, "Father Alberto talked about this issue, and I want to talk to you about it." ' "

But after 400 shows, Cutie' fell victim to trash TV and low ratings. Telemundo replaced him with a Jerry Springer-style host from Peru.

At 1:13 p.m., Cutie' pulls into the Radio Paz parking lot. Inside the chilly studio, a chalice, cruets, missal and multiline phone await along with the day's congregation: five station workers, who soon will be joined by callers with prayer requests. Cutie' dons a white linen alb and scarlet stole. He puts on a headset, takes a seat in front of a blue Radio Paz microphone and celebrates La Santa Misa, alternating the familiar rhythms of Mass by hitting a phone button and answering, "Intencions por favor."

"There's not a person who's around him who doesn't feel his energy," says Anna del Rio, the station's public relations director. "Wherever Father Albert is, people want to be." Del Rio, 23, and her fiance like to hang out with the priest. "He doesn't get shocked by anything. He lives with his feet in this world," she says.

It's a paradox that illuminates Cutie"s appeal. "You're trying to connect a very old institution that's perceived by many as outdated and old-fashioned with reality and today," he says. "I spend most of my time trying to speak to people in very down-to-Earth language."

After a quick lunch of fried eggs and rice, a Cuban staple, he's back at the wheel. From 4 to 6 p.m. he'll host another call-in show, Direct Line, then do an interview with CNN Espanol, and finally attend a party for his station's clients. With a few minutes to spare, he zips over to St. Patrick Church, where he spent four years until his recent transfer. Spotting a crew replacing windows at the elementary school where he taught catechism, he brakes to a halt and hops out to talk with Smitty, the Haitian-American maintenance chief.

"When are you coming back?" Smitty asks.

"It's all in God's hands," he says.

He looks both ways and shoots back into traffic.

- Christopher Scanlan is director of National Writers Workshops at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg.

© Copyright 2003