Fernando Cuevas, a Spanish priest from the city of Valencia, has been dubbed the “Tinder Priest” because of his impressive matchmaking record – 270 marriages and no divorces.

Father Fernando’s matchmaking career began 14 years ago. he was walking with a young practicing Catholic man named Salva, when he was approached by a group of young women. Impressed by the beauty of the girls and knowing that they shared his Catholic values, Salva asked the priest to play matchmaker and introduce him to one of them. Five months later, Salva married one of the girls, Geles, a Fine Arts student, and Fernando Cuevas’ career as “Tinder Priest” began. He has been taking his role as a matchmaker for practicing Catholics very seriously ever since.

Realizing that Western society was becoming increasingly secularized, and that practicing Catholics were finding it difficult to meet romantic prospects who shared their core values and beliefs, Fernando Cuevas took it upon himself to help them.

Photo: Fernando Cuevas

“People who are very committed to their faith look for someone who is the same,” the priest said. “It is not something secondary that has no importance, it is something fundamental. But the society is very secularized and people have tremendous religious ignorance and lack of interest. They have no interest in the things of God because they have not been brought up that way. Those who do want to live their faith attach great importance to it and want to find someone like that.”

Over the years, Father Fernando put together a special form that he asks people to fill out in order to maximize their chances of meeting someone suitable. It contains details like name, surname, age, year of birth, height, studies, current job, hobbies, virtues, shortcomings, things you’re looking for in a partner, and, obviously, degree of commitment to the Church.

Some of those things sound way more important than others, but the Tinder Priest claims that the two most essential factors to a successful match are height – the man has to be taller than the woman – and place of residence. No matter how good a match looks on paper, if the candidates live far away from one another, the relationship is unlikely to work.

Father Fernando spends much of his time analyzing such forms, paying close attention to personality traits and interests, and once he spots a good match, he sends each candidate a file with the other person’s information and pictures, and if they both approve, he gives the man the woman’s number so they can get in touch. As far as he is concerned, that’s where his job as a matchmaker ends.

 

The Tinder Priest has built quite a reputation among single practicing Catholics not only in Spain, but in other Latin countries in Central and South America. He gets about 20 daily requests from people looking for love, and he tries to help all of them. He claims to have made thousands of matches in the last 14 years, and he is proud to be the matchmaker behind 270 happy marriages, with 0 divorces on record.

Fernando Cuevas doesn’t take responsibility for the happiness of the couples he matched. He only had the inspiration to introduce them to each other, but he never counseled them on relationships or marriage, so the merit is all theirs. He is convinced that the success of his matches is due to the fact that these “are very spiritual people and they are very used to giving and giving themselves”.