"You will be my witnesses… to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:8)
Stories of Jews and Gentiles from every background who have encountered Jesus the Messiah and found their home in the Catholic Church. These testimonies reveal the diverse paths by which God draws hearts to Himself.
Having been raised in a Conservative Jewish home in suburban Toronto, I was a regular attendee at synagogue on Sabbaths and High Holidays. My father is a Holocaust survivor from Poland and my mother’s family escaped the pogroms in Russia. Both settled here in Canada and raised my sister and myself in a Jewish and Yiddish speaking environment where all of our friends were Jewish and Israel was our raison d’être. Christianity was the religion of the outsiders, the faith of anti-semites and Jew-haters, the creed of the Crusaders, Inquisitors, Persecutors, and Nazis. Yet my mother would remind me continually that "Jesus was a Jew"...
My name is Miryam Leah. I am 35 years old – Jewish, Italian, from an ultra-orthodox hassidic family (lubavitch – my father is the shaliach, the “sent one” of the Rebbe), and now for 8 years, Catholic and Dominican sister.
Read more: He Clothed Me with Garments of Salvation (Isa 61:7)
Here is a translation of Magdi Allam’s account of his conversion to Catholicism. The formerly Muslim journalist was baptized by Benedict XVI at Saturday's Easter Vigil Mass 2008 in St. Peter's Basilica.
Aaron Jean-Marie Lustiger, cardinal and archbishop, died on August 5th, 2007, aged 80. At the funeral of Jean-Marie Lustiger, at Notre Dame de Paris on August 10th, his second cousin Jonas Moses-Lustiger read a psalm in Hebrew and placed on the coffin a jar of earth that had been gathered on the Mount of Olives. Then another cousin, Arno Lustiger, bent over the coffin to recite Kaddish. Only when those things were done was the body of Cardinal Lustiger carried inside the cathedral, where Catholic panoply took over.
This is the story of my return to the Catholic Church. I will attempt to explain how my walk with the Lord these past years has led me to this important and difficult decision, yet one that I make in peace and joy. It is addressed to my Evangelical Christian and Messianic Jewish friends in Israel, and particularly to those who do not believe that one can be a "true believer" and a Catholic at the same time. It is also written as a personal testimony for my many good friends around the world who may be interested in my walk of faith. To them I dedicate this essay and pray that it will help us to grow in unity in loving and worshiping the King of Kings.
