(Latin: con, with, toward; vertere, to turn)

One who turns or changes from a state of sin to repentance, from a lax to a more earnest and serious way of life, from unbelief to faith, from heresy to the true faith. It consists not merely in joining a Church but in a change of heart and in the acceptsance of the doctrines and submission to the laws of the Church established by Jesus Christ. This appears best in the narratives of the process of conversion by notable converts. Saint Augustine of Hippo wrote his "Confessions"; and Cardinal Newman's "Apologia pro Vita Sua" is famous. Others are: Kinsman, "Salve Mater"; Brownson, "The Convert, or, Leaves from my Experience"; Kent Stone, "The Invitation Heeded"; Ronald Knox, "A Spiritual Æneid"; Mrs Anstice Baker, "A Modern Pilgrim's Progress." In the United States, 36,376 converts were reported during 1929, the total Catholic population being listed as 20,112,758. In Great Britain since the Oxford Movement of 1840, many lists have been made of the more prominent converts from Protestantism to the Catholic Church. These have been collected by W. Gordon Gorman in his work, "Converts to Rome," London, 1899. The number of converts in England in 1925 was 11,948; in 1926,11,714; in 1927,12,065. In missionary countries, the number of converts has been very great especially in China, often as many as 200,000 a year.