List of converts to Catholicism

The following is a list of notable individuals who converted to Catholicism from a different religion or no religion.

Converts

From Islam

• Jean Mohamed Ben Abdeljlil, Moroccan Roman Catholic priest and a Catholic convert from Islam.
• Leo Africanus (c. 1494 – c. 1554?), Berber Andalusi Moorish diplomat and author who was converted to Christianity following his capture
• Bernard of Alzira (1135–1181), Andalusian prince and diplomat
• Juan Andrés, Spanish Islamic scholar who converted to Catholicism and wrote a well known polemical work against Islam, the Confusión o confutación de la secta mahomética y del Alcorán
• Juliana Awada (born 1974), Lebanese-Argentine businesswoman and First Lady of Argentina
• Adi Kurdi – Indonesia actor convert to Catholic.
• Josephine Bakhita (c. 1869–1947), Sudanese-Italian Canossian religious sister and Roman Catholic saint from Darfur, Sudan. She was forcibly converted to Islam. On 9 January 1890 Bakhita was baptised with the names of Josephine Margaret and Fortunata.
• Basuki Abdullah (1915–1993), Indonesian painter
• Bayano, also known as Ballano or Vaino, was an African enslaved by Spaniards who led the biggest slave revolts of 16th century in Panama
• Mohammed Christophe Bilek, Algerian former Muslim who lives in France since 1961; baptized Roman Catholic in 1970; in the 1990s, he founded Our Lady of Kabyle, a French website devoted to evangelisation among Muslims
• Francis Bok – Sudanese-American activist, convert to Islam from Christianity; but later returned to his Christian faith
• Jean-Bédel Bokassa (1921–1996), dictator of the Central African Republic and its successor state, the Central African Empire in what he became and declared Emperor (Bokassa was born Catholic Christian, converted himself to Sunni Islam for a year and a half, and came back to Catholic Christianity).
• Moussa Dadis Camara – ex-officer of the Guinean army who served as the President of the Republic of Guinea; Roman Catholic Christian convert from Islam
• Chehab family – prominent Lebanese noble family; having converted from Sunni Islam, the religion of his predecessors, was the first Maronite ruler of the Emirate of Mount Lebanon
• Djibril Cissé – French international footballer
• Hansen Clarke – U.S. Representative for Michigan's 13th congressional district
• Constantine the African – Baghdad-educated Muslim who died in 1087 as a Christian monk at Monte Cassino
• Casilda of Toledo (1007–1107), Muslim princess, the daughter of the ruler of Toledo.
• Justinus Darmojuwono (1914–1994), first Indonesian Cardinal of the Catholic Church; converted to Catholicism in 1932, served as Archbishop of Semarang from 1963 to 1981, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1967
• Bob Denard, French soldier and mercenary. Born a Roman Catholic, Denard converted first to Judaism, then to Islam, and finally back to Catholicism again
• Dewi Rezer – Indonesian model of French descent
• Estevanico (c. 1500–1539), Berber originally from Morocco and one of the early explorers of the Southwestern United States
• Joseph Fadelle (born Mohammed al-Sayyid al-Moussawi in 1964), Roman Catholic convert from Islam and writer born in 1964 in Iraq to a Shiite family
• Rima Fakih (born 1985), Lebanese-American model, actress, professional wrestler and beauty pageant titleholder, Miss USA 2010, converted to the Maronite Church from Shia Islam upon marriage to her Maronite husband
• George XI of Kartli, Georgian monarch who ruled Eastern Georgia from 1676 to 1688 and again from 1703 to 1709; an Eastern Orthodox Christian, he converted to Islam prior to his appointment as governor of Qandahar; later converted to Roman Catholicism
• San Geronimo, a young Arab who had embraced Catholic Christianity, and had been baptized with the name of Geronimo
• Maria Hertogh, Dutch woman who had been raised by Muslims, then later returned to her Catholic biological parents
• Antuan Ilgit (born in 1972), Turkish-Italian Jesuit
• Sabatina James (born 1982), born in Dhedar, Pakistani-Austrian book author; started a new life in Vienna, changing her name and converting to Catholicism; baptized in 2006
• Lina Joy, Malay convert from Islam to Christianity; born Azlina Jailani in 1964 in Malaysia to Muslim parents of Javanese descent; converted at age 26; in 1998, she was baptized, and applied to have her conversion legally recognized by the Malaysian courts
• Don Juan of Persia (1560–1604), late 16th– and early 17th-century figure in Iran and Spain; also known as Faisal Nazary; was a native of Iran, who later moved westward; settled in Spain where he became a Roman Catholic
• Ilyas Khan – British philanthropist and businessman. Notable British Roman Catholic convert from Islam
• Ivan Krušala – writer, diplomat, explorer and a Catholic convert from Islam.
• Lakandula – Filipino ruler before Spanish conquest of Philippines
• Baldassare Diego Loyola (born Muhammad el-Attaz, 1631–1667) – Moroccan prince. He became a Jesuit priest and devoted himself to the evangelization of Muslims.
• Fernão Lopes (died 1545), 16th-century Portuguese soldier in India who converted to Roman Catholicism
• Enrique de Malaca – Malay slave of Ferdinand Magellan, converted to Roman Catholicism after being purchased in 1511
• Hubert Maga – former president of President of Dahomey
• Fadhma Aït Mansour – mother of French writers Jean Amrouche and Taos Amrouche
• Carlos Menem (born 1930), former Syrian-Argentinian President of Argentina; raised a Nusayri but converted to Roman Catholicism, a constitutional requirement for accessing the presidency until 1994
• Mizse – last Palatine of King Ladislaus IV of Hungary in 1290; born into a Muslim family in Tolna County in the Kingdom of Hungary; converted to Roman Catholicism
• Rajah Matanda – ruler of Maynila, a pre-Hispanic Tagalog polity along the Pasig River in what is now Manila, Philippines
• Archbishop Thomas Luke Msusa – born into a Muslim family; converted to Christianity as a child and later became an archbishop in his home country of Malawi, as well as converting and baptizing his father, a former imam
• Paul Mulla – Turkish scholar and professor of Islamic Studies at the Pontifical Oriental Institute
• Anthony Neyrot – Italian Dominican priest, apostate, reconvert, and martyr.
• Fata Omanović – Bosniak historical figure from Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Domenico Ottomano (born Osman, 1642–1676) – alleged Ottoman prince and Dominican friar
• Karim Ouchikh – French lawyer and politician of Algerian (Kabylie) origin
• Malika Oufkir (born 1953), Berber-Moroccan writer and daughter of General Mohamed Oufkir; she and her siblings are converts from Islam to Catholicism; and she writes in her book, Stolen Lives, "we had rejected Islam, which had brought us nothing good, and opted for Catholicism instead"
• Shams Pahlavi (1917–1996), Princess of Iran and the elder sister of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran
• Sigi Wimala – Indonesian model and actress, converted to Catholicism after marriage with famous director, Timo Tjahtanto.
• Abdul Rahman – Afghan convert to Catholic Christianity who escaped the death penalty because of foreign pressure
• Rianti Cartwright – Indonesian actress, model, presenter and VJ; two weeks before departure to the United States to get married, she left the Muslim faith to become a baptized Catholic with the name Sophia Rianti Rhiannon Cartwright
• Nazli Sabri (1894–1978), Queen of Egypt, converted to the Catholic Church in 1950 and took the name "Mary Elizabeth"
• Begum Samru – Kashmir ruler of Sardhana, a small principality near Meerut.
• Lamin Sanneh – scholar of missions and religious studies
• Bashir Shihab II (1767–1850), Lebanese Emir of Mount Lebanon who ruled Lebanon in the first half of the 19th century; his family was Sunni Muslim; he and some members of his family converted to the Maronite Catholic Church at the end of the 18th century
• The Shihab family – prominent Lebanese noble family who originally belonged to Sunni Islam, and converted to Christianity at the end of the 18th century
• Mary Short (1802–1849), British-born Indian queen consort of Awadh, converted to Islam upon marriage, and converted to Catholicism when widowed.
• Skanderbeg (1405–1468), Albanian nobleman and military commander, was forcibly converted to Islam from Christianity, but reverted to Christianity later in life
• Rudolf Carl von Slatin – Anglo-Austrian soldier and administrator in the Sudan
• Albertus Soegijapranata – born in Surakarta, Dutch East Indies, to a Muslim courtier and his wife who later converted to Catholicism; the first native Indonesian bishop; known for his pro-nationalistic stance, often expressed as "100% Catholic, 100% Indonesian"
• Isabel de Solís – slave concubine and later the consort of Abu l-Hasan Ali, Sultan of Granada. After sultan's death, she converted to Roman Catholicism
• Maria Aurora von Spiegel (born Fatima) – Turkish mistress of Augustus II and the wife of a Polish noble
• Sophia Latjuba — Indonesian actress who converted to Catholicism from Anglicanism after previously converting to Anglicanism from Islam
• Tabaraji of Ternate – Indonesian sultan; converted to Roman Catholicism after 1534 and baptised with the name Dom Manuel
• Ismael Urbain – French journalist and interpreter.
• Francis Verney – English adventurer, soldier of fortune, and pirate. Converted to Catholicism shortly before his death
• Muley Xeque (Arabic: مولاي الشيخ Mawlay al-Shaykh, 1566–1621), Moroccan prince, born in Marrakech in 1566; exiled in Spain, he converted to Roman Catholicism in Madrid and was known as Philip of Africa or Philip of Austria
• Zaida of Seville – born an Iberian Muslim; when Seville fell to the Almoravids, she fled to the protection of Alfonso VI of Castile, becoming his mistress, converting to Christianity and taking the baptismal name of Isabel
• Zayd Abu Zayd (c. 1195–1265/1270), last Almohad governor of Valencia, Spain; remained a loyal ally of James I of Aragon; in 1236 he converted to Roman Catholicism, adopting the name of Vicente Bellvis, a fact which he kept secret until the fall of Valencia
• Saye Zerbo – President of the Republic of Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso)

Former Catholics who had been converts

• Magdi Allam: converted in 2008, but left in 2013 to protest what he deemed its "globalism", "weakness", and "soft stance against Islam"
• Audrey Assad: American singer-songwriter and contemporary Christian music artist who converted from Evangelical Protestantism to Catholicism in 2007 but in 2021 announced that she was no longer a Catholic or Christian.
• Margaret Anna Cusack: Anglican nun who converted to Catholicism; founded The Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, and later left due to conflict with a bishop; later became a critic of the Church's hierarchy and the Society of Jesus; her order survived in the Catholic Church
• Rod Dreher: writer and blogger; raised Methodist before converting to Catholicism; converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in 2006
• Henry Ford II: converted by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen; twice divorced; later ceased practicing the faith, although he received the last rites of the Catholic Church on his deathbed; his funeral was Episcopalian
• Ernest Hemingway: Converted to marry his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer. He subsequently divorced Pfeiffer and ceased practicing the faith. He received Catholic graveside services because his family requested it. Also, the fact that his death was a suicide was concealed initially. Ex-Catholics and people who committed suicide were not buried according to Catholic rites.^{[citation needed]}
• Ammon Hennacy: Christian anarchist and activist who was Catholic from 1952 to 1965; his essay "On Leaving the Catholic Church" concerns his formal renunciation of the religion
• David Kirk: Baptist by upbringing; converted to the Melkite Greek Catholic Church in 1953 and became a Melkite priest in 1964; became Eastern Orthodox in 2004
• Otto Klemperer: German conductor. Converted to Catholicism, but returned to Judaism near the end of his life.
• Robert Lowell: United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry twice; left the faith by 1951
• Walter M. Miller, Jr.: author of A Canticle for Leibowitz; converted after his experiences in World War II; later renounced the faith
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Franco-Swiss philosopher, writer and political theorist who converted to Catholicism as a young man but later apostated to Calvinism in 1754
• Britney Spears: American singer, songwriter, dancer, and actress. Was raised Baptist before converting in 2021 but ceased believing in God by 2022

See also

• Converts to Catholicism from Anglicanism
• Converts to Catholicism from atheism and agnosticism
• Converts to Catholicism from Judaism

References

External links

• Historic Catholic Converts to Catholicism Produced by EWTN hosted by Fr. Charles Connor – Real Audio