[3] He was ordained a priest by Bishop Georg Moser in the Basilica of St. Vitus in Ellwangen an der Jagst on 27 March 1977.

From 1986 to 2000, he was director of the Academy of the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart,[1] where developed some of the earliest studies of women in the Church, environmental issues, and clerical sexual abuse.

[citation needed] In 1987, he received his doctorate in fundamental theology for his work "Sprache als metaphorischer Prozess.

[citation needed] Fürst was a member of the National Ethics Council of Germany as the representative of the Catholic Church from its creation in 2001 to May 2005.

[4] In 2009, Fürst criticized the lifting of the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson and said that it had led to "external and internal alienation from the church on the part of many believers, to a betrayal of trust especially among Jewish sisters and brothers in their relationship to the Church, and to a considerable disturbance in the Christian-Jewish dialogue".

[8] During the COVID-19 pandemic, Fürst criticized vaccination opponents as lacking social solidarity with the vulnerable and called them "downright selfish and extremely hurtful".