On May 1^st. 1976, I was born in Guadalahara, Jalisco, Mexico to Maria Gutiérrez and Manuel del Toro-Vargas, the youngest of nine sons.  My parents named me Alejandro.  After pre-school, my parents, my brother Daniel and I immigrated from Guadalajara to Aurora, Illinois where my older brothers had lived for many years.  I studied at Jefferson Middle School and graduated from West Aurora High school in Aurora.  After teaching myself to play guitar and keyboard, I joined my brother Daniel’s band during my junior year of high school.  After I graduated from highschool, I was employed in a fulltime manufacturing job building drive-thru windows and in my spare time, playing in our band for several years as keyboardist.  I played guitar in the choir at St. Therese, my home parish, and served for three years as one of the several youth leaders in the Aurora deanery.

My friendship with the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart—my neighbors, was a very positive and motivating one as I discerned the possibility of a priestly vocation.  I first experienced God’s call to share in the Priesthood of Jesus Christ, as a deep desire to come to know Christ and to love him more deeply and intimately, making His Love and Mercy known also to my family and friends. My awareness of God’s goodness and generosity towards me and my whole family provoked in me a desire to respond, to give something in thanksgiving for his providential care.  That very personal and holy desire became my vocation. It came to me principally from the graces received during the reading and studying of the Word of God within my youth group, and from the reflections which Fr. Favio Garzón, a Salesian priest from Colombia, imparted weekly to all the youth group leaders in Aurora.  The fruits of our weekly Scripture readings and reflections also became themes for meditation and discussion within our respective parish groups each Sunday afternoon.  This dialogue with the Word of God each week and seeking its application in the lives of the parish’s youth became a very important activity in my life, and an activity that was fed by a growing love and appreciation of the Gospel message of Jesus Christ.

After an interview with Fr. Martin Heinz, the vocations director of the diocese, I entered St. John Vianney College Seminary in Miami where I studied philosophy for two years.  After two subsequent years of philosophical studies, I attained my Bachelor’s in Philosophy from St. Gregory the Great Seminary in Lincoln, Nebraska.  Then sent to live at the Pontifical North American College for my theological studies, I attained my Bachelor’s in Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where I am currently working on a License in Dogmatic Theology.

With the help of God’s grace, I will be ordained a priest of Jesus Christ on May 19^th, 2007 by the imposition of hands of his Excellency Most Rev. Thomas G. Doran, and I will celebrate my Mass of Thanksgiving at St.Therese of Jesus church in Aurora, on May 20^th, 2007.