Washington D.C., Apr 28, 2011 / 18:04 pm
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich told the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast that his conversion to Catholicism helped him discover the “transforming power of faith” in the face of the “increasingly aggressive secularization” of the United States.
“People ask me when I decided to become Catholic,” he told those gathered at Washington D.C.’s Marriott Wardman Park Hotel on the morning of April 27. “It would be more accurate to say that I gradually became Catholic and then realized one day that I should accept the faith that surrounded me.”
“The depth of faith and history contained in the life of the Catholic Church were increasingly apparent to me,” he added. “Slowly, over a decade, the centrality of the Eucharist in the Catholic Mass became more and more obvious to me.”
Gingrich, who entered the Church in 2009, is widely mentioned as a potential Republican presidential candidate.