Conversions through the Virgin Mary: verified testimonies

Conversions through the Virgin Mary: verified testimonies

Documented historical conversions · XIX-XX centuries

Some of the most extraordinary cases of conversion to Catholicism in the 19th and 20th centuries involved people who left the most complete unbelief - anti-clerical Jews, atheist poets, journalists children of communists, agnostic philosophers - and who experienced, with different nuances, an eruption of the supernatural mediated in some way by the figure of the Virgin Mary. They all left written testimonies.

1. Alfonso Ratisbonne: Twenty seconds that changed his life (Rome, 20 January 1842)

Alphonse Ratisbonne was 27 years old in January 1842 and was what his contemporaries would have called an illustrated man. It came from a Jewish family of Alsatian bankers, was anti-lerical convinced and felt special repugnance for Catholicism, in part because his older brother, Theodore, had become and ordained Jesuit priest.

Ratisbonne was in Rome in passing, with no religious intention. Baron Théodore of Bussières, his friend, proposed to him as a challenge to carry for a few days the Miraculous Medal - the medal designed according to the vision of Catherine Labouré - and to recite daily the prayer of the Memory. Ratisbonne accepted as a game: it seemed to him a harmless superstition.

El 20 de enero de 1842, mientras esperaba al barón en la iglesia de Sant’Andrea delle Fratte de Roma, Ratisbonne se sentó en un banco. De repente, la iglesia se oscureció y sólo permaneció iluminada una de las capillas laterales. Allí vio a la Virgen María tal como aparece en la Medalla Milagrosa, envuelta en una luz de gloria. La visión duró apenas veinte o treinta segundos. Cuando el barón regresó, encontró a Ratisbonne arrodillado, llorando y balbuceando.

What makes this case something exceptional is not just the conversion itself, but its documentation. The Baron of Bussières immediately issued a notarial record of the event before several witnesses. The Church opened a formal canonical research. Cardinal Patrizzi, vicar of the Pope in Rome, collected testimonies from all present. The case was officially recognized by the Holy See and is included in the formal record of the veneration of the Miraculous Medal.

Eleven days after the vision, on January 31, 1842, Alphonse Ratisbonne was baptized. He became a Jesuit, as his brother, was ordained a priest, and dedicated the rest of his life to evangelization in the Holy Land, where he founded several religious congregations. He died in 1884.

2. Paul Claudel: The Christmas Magnificat that changed his life (Paris, 25 December 1886)

Paul Claudel tenía dieciocho años en la Navidad de 1886 y era, según sus propias palabras, un «salvaje» en materia religiosa: había absorbido el agnosticismo y el ateísmo que dominaban los círculos intelectuales franceses de la época, influido especialmente por la poesía de Arthur Rimbaud. No creía en Dios y no tenía ningún interés en la religión.

On December 25, 1886, moved more by aesthetic curiosity than by faith, he attended the Christmas Mass in the Cathedral of Notre- Dame de Paris. In the afternoon he returned for the Vespers. The choir sang the Magnificat - the anthem of the Virgin Mary in the Gospel of Luke - with the Gregorian solemnity of the great feasts.

What happened at that time is almost impossible to describe with the ordinary categories of psychology. Claudel himself tried 18 years later, in a story he titled Ma conversión:

Claudel describes the song of the Magnificat - the song of Mary - as the detonator of an experience that he himself never knew to explain rationally. The Virgin Mary, through her song, had been the channel of a radical and irreversible interior transformation.

Paul Claudel would become one of the great Catholic writers of the 20th century: playwright, poet and diplomat. Among his best known works are The Annunciation to Mary y The satin shoe. He was received at the French Academy in 1946.

3. André Frossard: «Entré ateo y salí católico» (París, 8 de julio de 1935)

André Frossard nació en 1915 y fue educado en el ateísmo más riguroso: su padre, Louis-Oscar Frossard, era uno de los fundadores del Partido Comunista Francés y su primer secretario general. Para André, la existencia de Dios era simplemente algo que no merecía consideración. No era un ateo militante; era, como él mismo escribiría después, un «ateo distraído».

El 8 de julio de 1935, a las cinco de la tarde, André entró en la capilla de las Hermanas de la Adoración en la rue d’Ulm de París. No iba a rezar. Iba a buscar a un amigo. Había entrado en un local equivocado.

What happened inside that chapel in the following minutes described it thirty years later in his book Dieu existe, je L’ai rencontré (God exists, I found him, 1969), which became a bestseller with millions of copies sold. Before the Most Holy Sacrament, he experienced a presence that he immediately identified as supernatural. In that presence she also recognized the Virgin Mary as part of the reality that involved her.

A las cinco y cuarto, cuando salió a la calle, su amigo le preguntó qué le había pasado. Frossard respondió: «Soy católico.» Veinte minutos habían sido suficientes. Fue bautizado poco después y vivió el resto de su vida como un creyente apasionado.

André Frossard became one of the great Catholic journalists of the 20th century. He was elected a member of the French Academy in 1987. Pope John Paul II, whom he interviewed extensively, commented with admiration on his conversion. He died in 1995.

4. Edith Stein: the philosopher who found the truth in Santa Teresa de Avila

Edith Stein was born in Breslau (now Poland) on October 12, 1891, in a Jewish family. He was one of the brightest minds of his generation: a direct disciple of the philosopher Edmund Husserl, considered one of the main exponents of German phenomenology. In his youth he had moved away from the Jewish faith and went through philosophical agnosticism.

In the summer of 1921, during a stay at a friend's house in Bergzabern, Edith randomly took a book from the library: the autobiography of Santa Teresa de Avila, The Book of Life. Lo leyó de una sola noche. Al amanecer cerró el libro y dijo: «Esta es la verdad.»

She was baptized on January 1, 1922 and took the name Teresa Benedict of the Cross. Although Saint Teresa of Avila was the instrument of her conversion, the Virgin Mary from the beginning occupied a central place in her spirituality. When he entered the Carmel of Cologne in 1934 he did so on the day of the first days of the feast of St. Teresa, and received the habit as a novice in the month dedicated to the Virgin.

In his theological writings of the Carmelite stage, Edith Stein developed a deep reflection on the role of the Virgin Mary in the history of salvation, linking Mary's figure to the mission of women in the modern world. Your test Women (1932) is considered one of the founding texts of female Christian anthropology.

He was arrested by the Nazis on 2 August 1942 as a reprisal for a pastoral letter from the Dutch bishops condemning anti-Semitism. He died in the Auschwitz gas chambers on August 9, 1942. It was beatified by John Paul II in 1987 and canonized in 1998. In 1999 it was proclaimed Co- Patron of Europe.

O Virgin Mary, Star of the Sea, who guides the lost to your Son, intercede for all who seek the truth without even knowing your name. May the beauty of your maternal faith lead you, as many before, to the light of Christ. Amen.