Gentili says his conversion led his Catholic parents to Christ

2023-09-29 19:38:27

Presenter Danilo Gentili participated in a podcast and stated that his conversion to the Gospel as a teenager caused strangeness in his family, which came from a long Catholic tradition, but that later his change of life led his parents to conversion.

In conversation with Thiago Nigro, known as Cousin Ricothe presenter of SBT revealed that his conversion happened at a time when becoming an evangelical was unpopular and he was mocked by the people around him.

The grandson of Italian, Catholic immigrants, he had to deal with his family’s setbacks, but the impact that reading the Holy Bible had on him was greater than the adversities.

“[Tenho] I am absolutely certain that this changed my life forever. When I was 14 I read the Bible […] I did catechism and I asked some questions. The catechist kicked me out of the catechism. She kept asking questions and she didn’t know how to answer them. Look, I’m not talking bad about Catholicism, I’m telling you my experience,” said Gentili.

After reading the Holy Bible, some observations led him to take a critical view of the tradition followed by his family: “I began to think that there is no sacred institution. It is not because an institution is saying that this is right that [realmente] It’s the right thing”.

“So, I researched a lot, I went to a lot of places. I love talking about religion, I’ve researched everything you can imagine. Umbanda, spiritualism, I read Alan Kardec’s gospel, I read some books by Jehovah’s Witnesses, Islam. I really like talking about religion. And I stopped at a neighborhood Baptist Church, in Santo André, where I felt very good. At first, my father and mother were fine because my grandfather came here from Italy and supported the family by painting churches [católicas]”, recalled Gentili.

The friction with the family was not irrelevant, said the presenter: “They thought it was an affront for me to leave Catholicism and look for another path, but I felt good there. I thought it was consistent with some things I heard. I understood that there is no perfection in any institution, but I understood that there is coherence in some points that I considered important in that Baptist Church, a small, neighborhood thing, I created friendships, I liked going to it”.

“They were very angry with me because of that, they were going to spy on me. My grandmother, my mother’s mother, was an extreme Catholic. Those butts. There’s this thing in my father’s family that his father painted churches. When I converted, being a believer wasn’t as easy as it is now, I caught the end [da fase em] which was a strange business. They made fun”, he reported in the interview, broadcast in November 2022 on the channel Primo Cast.

However, the family’s curiosity about the reasons that led him to convert resulted in a complete change: “My mother went there to see what ‘brainwashing’ they were doing to me. She would go out on the street and watch it. Then she converted. And then my father too, my sister too. They went to see the brainwashing they were doing to me, to ‘save me from the sect’ and ended up converting”, testified.