Gingrich relates journey to Catholicism
By DANIEL BURKE RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
Brendan Smialowski
Getty Images
NEWT GINGRICH
WASHINGTON - Tilting toward a run at the presidency, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich traced his spiritual journey from Southern Baptist to Roman Catholic at a Catholic prayer breakfast here last week.
"People ask me when I decided to become Catholic," said Gingrich, who formally converted in 2009. "It would be more accurate to say that I gradually became Catholic and then realized that I should accept the faith that surrounded me."
The twice-divorced former Georgia congressman has labored to assure conservative Christians of his fidelity to traditional values. Just 11 percent of white evangelicals, and 16 percent of white Catholics, favor Gingrich as the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, according to a March Pew Research Center poll.
Gingrich also explained his religious conversion last week to National Catholic Register.
"The depth of faith and history contained in the life of the Catholic Church were increasingly apparent to me," Gingrich said later. "Slowly, over a decade, the centrality of the Eucharist in the Catholic Mass became more and more obvious to me."
Gingrich also noted the spiritual influence of his wife, Callista, a lifelong Catholic, theologian George Weigel and Pope Benedict XVI.
It was Benedict's 2008 trip to the U.S. that finally drew Gingrich into the church.
"For me, the joyful and radiating presence of the Holy Father was a moment of confirmation about the many things I have been thinking and experiencing over the last several years," Gingrich said of meeting the pope that day.
That evening, Gingrich said, he decided to convert to Catholicism.
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