According to a school buddy, Tom Cruise aspired to be a Catholic priest as a teenager, but changed his mind when he was asked “not to return” to St Francis Seminary school after being found with alcohol.
Before the action star became famous, he was an introverted, lonely brown-haired child who was a fervent Catholic.
Mr Cruise, born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, had a difficult childhood due to his abusive father.
According to the Daily News, he appears to have sought consolation in the Roman Catholic Church, and was convinced to apply to St Francis Seminary School in Cincinnati, Ohio, by Father Ric Schneider.
“Tom was instantly hooked,” Father Ric Schneider told the NY Daily News.
“I think he wanted a good education. With his parents going through a divorce, it was tough on him, that’s maybe one of the reasons why he came here.”
“He as a typical teenager, trying to find his way in life,” recalled Schneider, who usually drove the young teen back to Louisville from Cincinnati around the holidays.
Tom just made it into the seminary in 1976 after getting 110 on an IQ test – the lowest possible score allowed for admission.
He was not regarded a great student once he arrived, but he did show signs of potential in the craft that would make him one of the world’s most famous people.
According to buddy Shane Dempler, Cruise “came out of his shell” and was a key member of the theater club, where he competed against other institutions.
The priest in charge of the group reportedly recognized Mr Cruise as a top student and assigned him entire plays to memorize.
Shane Dempler, Cruise’s closest seminary friend, stated that Cruise was very serious about becoming a priest.
“He had a very strong Catholic faith,” Dempler said. “We went to Mass, spent time in the chapel and enjoyed hearing stories from the priests. We thought the priests had a great lifestyle and we were really interested in priesthood.
“In truth,” Dempler added, “we were too young to make that decision.”
However, the two would continuously breach the regulations and would frequently slip out of school to smoke or drink alcohol, according to Dempler.
Tom was a bit of a tearaway in his childhood, according to a school friend, and got in problems with the school when he was found with alcohol.
”I tossed about six, most broke, but we managed to get a couple and hide them in the nearby woods,” he explained.
”The priests didn’t even realise until some of the other boys found out about our plan and snuck into the woods and got drunk. They were caught staggering down the road to the seminary and forced to confess.”
According to Mr Dempler, the seminary later wrote to their parents, requesting them to withdraw their boys from the schools, which appears to have been the end of Mr Cruise’s religious dreams.
Cruise has never spoken publicly about his Catholic upbringing or his time at St. Francis.
