Disowned by His Muslim Family, He Gave His Life to Christ — and Became a Catholic Priest
Father Mustapha Amari, born in Algeria and raised in a Muslim family that moved to France, converted to Catholicism after studying philosophy at university in Strasbourg. His conversion led his family to disown him, and he also encountered reluctance from a Church unaccustomed to supporting converts from Islam. Amari found a spiritual home in the Chemin Neuf community and was ordained nearly 10 years ago. His story reflects the personal and social risks faced by some people who leave Islam for Christianity in Europe.
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Father Mustapha Amari, born in Algeria and raised in a Muslim family in France, converted to Catholicism after a gradual search for faith and became a priest in 2017. His conversion led to estrangement from his parents, but he says the Chemin Neuf community gave him a new sense of family and supported him through loneliness and hostility.
Amari grew up practicing his parents’ religion but said he had not experienced a personal relationship with God. While studying at university in Strasbourg, he began examining his beliefs through philosophy and was struck by Blaise Pascal’s distinction between the God of reason and the God revealed to the heart. A Protestant friend later gave him a New Testament, which he said helped him see meaning in his life and understand God as love.
He tried to return to Islam but felt unable to do so for reasons beyond family and cultural roots. He said the Gospels brought together questions about existence that had remained unresolved for him.
Before he was baptized, Amari’s father disowned him and his mother stopped answering his calls. He also recalled encountering hesitation from a parish when he asked about baptism: he was told to return after the summer and that the bishop would need to be consulted because his case was considered unusual.
After a year of volunteer work and a month-long silent Ignatian retreat, Amari decided to pursue the priesthood. He was ordained in 2017 as a member of Chemin Neuf, a community that combines communal life and shared responsibility among laypeople and clergy; he is now attached to a parish in the Paris suburbs.
Amari said he faced violent responses when he began sharing his testimony on TikTok around 2018–19, and later limited his online accounts to Catholic community platforms. He described the Chemin Neuf community and the wider community of believers as a source of strength amid adversity and loneliness.
At a 2023 Christian youth festival in Portugal, held shortly before World Youth Day, Amari tried unsuccessfully to call his mother on her birthday before going on stage. He then invited the crowd to give their lives to Jesus and recalled seeing thousands come forward.
Amari said he holds no grudge against his parents and recognizes that his conversion and decision to become a priest demanded a great deal of them. He reported that reconciliation had recently begun through prayer, and said that losing his former place in the family allowed his siblings to receive their father’s attention differently. He describes his religious community as a family “a hundredfold.”
Christian conversion, religious freedom, and belonging in Catholic theology
In Catholic theology, conversion, religious freedom, and belonging belong together: the Church proclaims conversion to Christ as a gift and a real call, but faith must be embraced freely, never imposed. Conversion is not merely a change of religious label; it is both a personal turning toward Christ and a lifelong renewal of thought and action. Belonging to the Church is not recruitment into a power group, but entry into communion with Christ and a life shaped by charity and justice.
The Catholic understanding of conversion holds together divine initiative and human freedom. The Church teaches that conversion is a gift of God, the work of the Trinity: the Spirit opens hearts to faith, while the person responds through a personal decision to accept Christ’s saving sovereignty and become his disciple. This response begins a continuing process—a “lifelong” turning away from sin and toward life in the Spirit—not a single moment after which conversion is complete.
The word metanoia—often translated as “repentance” or “conversion”—also helps explain why conversion concerns more than entering the Church from outside. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith says that, in its specifically Christian sense, conversion means a change in thinking and acting, a continuing reform directed toward fuller identification with Christ. It therefore applies first of all to the baptized, who are called to keep converting throughout their lives.
The Church’s missionary call follows from this understanding. Catholic teaching does not regard proclaiming Christ as unnecessary merely because people can pursue goodness or work for justice in other settings. It holds that people have a right to hear the Gospel and freely respond to Christ. Proclamation makes an invitation; it does not make a person’s response for them.
Religious freedom is not an embarrassment to evangelization but a condition fitting to faith. Vatican II teaches that a person’s response to God “must be free” because the act of faith is, by its nature, free. No one should be forced to embrace Christianity against their will; freedom also makes it possible to hear an invitation, accept it willingly, and live it openly.
“It is one of the major tenets of Catholic doctrine that man’s response to God in faith must be free: no one therefore is to be forced to embrace the Christian faith against his own will.”
This principle rules out coercion and dishonest pressure in religious persuasion. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith says that witness to truth should aim to convince through the word of God, not through force or tactics incompatible with the Gospel; it specifically warns against pressure, especially toward people who are poor or uneducated. The distinction is important: the Church may proclaim what it believes to be true and invite someone to accept it, but the invitation must respect the other person’s freedom and conscience.
Religious freedom, then, does not mean that religious truth is irrelevant or that all religious claims are interchangeable. The supplied Catholic texts affirm both the Church’s responsibility to proclaim the Gospel and the right of persons not to be coerced. The International Theological Commission describes evangelization as an appeal to faith, not an attempt to subjugate people or use political power to win adherents.
In the New Testament pattern described by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, those who receive the Gospel are baptized and added to the community of believers. The Church therefore understands belonging as more than private assent: it involves incorporation into a community of disciples. But its meaning is not institutional growth for its own sake. The same document says that incorporation is “not the expansion of a power-group,” but entry into friendship and communion with Christ, enlivened by charity and commitment to justice.
This connects personal conversion with the Church’s public and communal life. For Catholic theology, the Church is a sign and instrument of God’s Kingdom, not a political utopia or a generic fellowship detached from Christ. Belonging to the Church is therefore oriented toward Christ and the life of his Kingdom, while the Church’s growth through mission is meant to serve God’s presence in history.
This account also gives conversion an inward dimension. A person may enter the Church, yet still need continuing conversion in habits, judgment, and conduct. And Christians who have long belonged to the Church remain called to renewed fidelity. Conversion and belonging are not alternatives: conversion brings a person into communion, and communion calls its members to continuing conversion.
Catholic teaching also distinguishes welcoming a person into full communion from coercive proselytism. If a non-Catholic Christian, convinced of Catholic truth and acting from conscience, asks to enter full communion with the Catholic Church, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith says this choice should be respected as an expression of freedom and the work of the Holy Spirit. It also says that ecumenical work—Christian efforts toward unity—does not remove the Church’s responsibility to proclaim the fullness of the Catholic faith. Both must be pursued without undue pressure.
The distinction is not between mission and respect for other Christians. Rather, it is between a free response to a religious claim and an attempt to secure adherence through force or improper persuasion. The Church’s mission can include a clear presentation of Catholic belief, while respecting the conscience of anyone who does not accept it.
The Catholic account does not require pretending that Christians have always acted consistently with this teaching. The International Theological Commission acknowledges that conduct in the Church’s history has at times contradicted the spirit of the Gospel, even when undertaken with good intentions. It nevertheless presents the refusal to coerce belief as a persistent Christian teaching, renewed by Vatican II, and calls the Church to conversion and renewed fidelity.
The resulting vision is neither forced conformity nor indifference about faith. Christians are called to offer the Gospel, and people are free to hear it, examine it, accept it, or refuse it without coercion. When someone freely embraces Catholic faith, belonging means entering a communion centered on Christ and ordered toward a life of charity, justice, and continuing conversion.