Why Newt Gingrich Converted to Catholicism

It's not surprising that a man of Gingrich's ambitions would be drawn to the grandeur of worship at the basilica. Incense hangs in the air as the choir's descant reverberates off the highly polished walls of the Greek-style interior. "Isn't it just beautiful?" Gingrich asks. "That's part of what happened to me." (Her husband, Callista says, is an enthusiastic but limited singer: "He makes a joyful noise.")

Gingrich prepared for his conversion with Monsignor Walter Rossi, the basilica's rector. Because the institution is not a parish church, Gingrich's baptism took place at St. Joseph's on Capitol Hill, where Robert Kennedy attended morning Mass when he served in the Senate. Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl performed the ceremony, with his predecessor Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in attendance. Afterward, a small group of Catholic luminaries celebrated with a dinner at Café Milano in Georgetown.

He may march to the beat of St. Peter these days, but Newt is still Newt. "I don't think of myself as intensely religious," he says. Asked about Pope Benedict XVI's latest encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, the first economic and social statement of his papacy, Gingrich admits he hasn't yet read the whole thing but opines that the parts he has examined are "largely correct." And before Mass one July Sunday, Gingrich took a seat near the aisle and bowed his head. But he wasn't praying. Instead, the famously voracious reader was sneaking in a few pages of a novel until the service began.