The Pope and the convert

Personal conversion is at the heart of all faith. It’s an ongoing life work between the person and God, practiced in their own religion and guided by its teachings. At the Easter Vigil each year, those people drawn to the Catholic faith are baptized into the Church, drawn by their own calling and desire to follow it, fulfilled in the sacrament by the presiding priest or bishop.

Pope Benedict, the Bishop of Rome, baptized seven new members into the Catholic faith at the Vigil this year (see below), and because one of them was a well-known Muslim journalist, the press is all over the story. This is the kind of thing they like to make a big deal of, some in a most irresponsible way. That would apply to this Reuters article. Just look at the headline. And then this lead:

The Easter baptism of an Italian Muslim by Pope Benedict was a provocative act that raises questions about the Vatican’s approach to Islam, a leading participant in Christian-Muslim dialogue said on Monday.

Aref Ali Nayed, a key figure in a group of over 200 Muslim scholars launching discussion forums with Christian groups, said the Vatican had turned the baptism of Egyptian-born journalist Magdi Allam into “a triumphalist tool for scoring points.”

That’s outrageous, and highly irresponsible for Reuters to frame the story this way.

He said the Vatican should distance itself from a searing attack on Islam that Allam published on Sunday in the Milan daily Corriere della Sera, where he is deputy director.

What was it that Allam published? His account of his conversion. It’s amazing.

Dear Friends,

I am particularly happy to share with you my immense joy for this Easter of Resurrection that has brought me the gift of the Christian faith. I gladly propose the letter that I sent to the director of the Corriere della Sera, Paolo Mieli, in which I tell the story of the interior journey that brought me to the choice of conversion to Catholicism. This is the complete version of the letter, which was published by the Corriere della Sera only in part.

And then it proceeds with his account, to his editor, of his experience.

Thus, I finally saw the light, by divine grace — the healthy fruit of a long, matured gestation, lived in suffering and joy, together with intimate reflection and conscious and manifest expression. I am especially grateful to his holiness Pope Benedict XVI, who imparted the sacraments of Christian initiation to me, baptism, confirmation and Eucharist, in the Basilica of St. Peter’s during the course of the solemn celebration of the Easter Vigil. And I took the simplest and most explicit Christian name: “Cristiano.” Since yesterday evening therefore my name is Magdi Crisitano Allam.

For me it is the most beautiful day of [my] life. To acquire the gift of the Christian faith during the commemoration of Christ’s resurrection by the hand of the Holy Father is, for a believer, an incomparable and inestimable privilege. At almost 56 […], it is a historical, exceptional and unforgettable event, which marks a radical and definitive turn with respect to the past. The miracle of Christ’s resurrection reverberated through my soul, liberating it from the darkness in which the preaching of hatred and intolerance in the face of the “different,” uncritically condemned as “enemy,” were privileged over love and respect of “neighbor,” who is always, an in every case, “person”…

On my first Easter as a Christian I not only discovered Jesus, I discovered for the first time the face of the true and only God, who is the God of faith and reason. My conversion to Catholicism is the touching down of a gradual and profound interior meditation from which I could not pull myself away, given that for five years I have been confined to a life under guard, with permanent surveillance at home and a police escort for my every movement, because of death threats and death sentences from Islamic extremists and terrorists, both those in and outside of Italy.

He had initially called for “a moderate Islam” that renounces violence. And he was declared an enemy for that. He received death threats.

But…

At the same time providence brought me to meet practicing Catholics of good will who, in virtue of their witness and friendship, gradually became a point of reference in regard to the certainty of truth and the solidity of values.

That’s evangelization. The best evangelization…..living a daily life of good values, extending charity and good will, witnessing Gospel truths.

But undoubtedly the most extraordinary and important encounter in my decision to convert was that with Pope Benedict XVI, whom I admired and defended as a Muslim for his mastery in setting down the indissoluble link between faith and reason as a basis for authentic religion and human civilization, and to whom I fully adhere as a Christian to inspire me with new light in the fulfillment of the mission God has reserved for me.

What a tremendous witness this man is. His courageous testimony of faith is a startling reminder of the power of truth taught in the simplicity of daily work.

It is thanks to members of Catholic religious orders that I acquired a profoundly and essentially an ethical conception of life, in which the person created in the image and likeness of God is called to undertake a mission that inserts itself in the framework of a universal and eternal design directed toward the interior resurrection of individuals on this earth and the whole of humanity on the day of judgment, which is founded on faith in God and the primacy of values, which is based on the sense of individual responsibility and on the sense of duty toward the collective. It is in virtue of a Christian education and of the sharing of the experience of life with Catholic religious that I cultivated a profound faith in the transcendent dimension and also sought the certainty of truth in absolute and universal values.

This is stunning, in its singular, bold and unapologetic expression of faith and the desire for intellectual honesty and religious freedom.

If in Italy, in our home, the cradle of Catholicism, we are not prepared to guarantee complete religious freedom to everyone, how can we ever be credible when we denounce the violation of this freedom elsewhere in the world? I pray to God that on this special Easter he give the gift of the resurrection of the spirit to all the faithful in Christ who have until now been subjugated by fear.

Happy Easter to everyone.

Now pass it on.