In January 1842, a young Frenchman stepped into a church in Rome to kill a few minutes. He was Jewish, he thought religion was nonsense, and he was only wearing a Catholic medal because a friend had dared him to. A few minutes later, he was on the floor in tears. He spent the rest of his life as a Catholic priest.

His name was Alphonse Ratisbonne, the son of wealthy Jewish bankers in Strasbourg. By his own account he was indifferent to God, and he openly despised the Catholic Church, in part because his own brother had converted and become a priest. In the winter of 1842, engaged to be married, he stopped in Rome while travelling, and ran into a Catholic acquaintance, Baron de Bussieres, who kept pressing him about faith. To make him stop, Alphonse took a strange little dare. He would wear a medal of the Virgin Mary and say a short prayer each day. He wore it to mock it.

On the twentieth of January, the baron stopped at a church, Sant'Andrea delle Fratte, and left Alphonse alone inside for a few minutes. When he came back, he found Alphonse on his knees, weeping, unable to speak. When he finally could, Alphonse said the whole church had gone dark, and in a side chapel he had seen a woman, radiant, exactly as she appeared on the medal around his neck. She said nothing. She only gestured. And in that instant, he said, he knew, and he could not go back.

This was not left as a private feeling. Pope Gregory the Sixteenth ordered a formal inquiry. A cardinal questioned the witnesses across seventeen sessions. On the first of April, 1842, the Church declared it a true miracle, the instant and total conversion of Alphonse Ratisbonne. Eleven days after the vision he was baptized. He broke off his engagement, became a priest, and spent the rest of his life founding convents near Jerusalem.

Skeptics say a highly strung young man had an emotional collapse and called it a vision. Believers say heaven reached into a Rome church and turned an enemy into a son. What no one disputes is the before and the after. A scoffer wore a medal as a joke, walked into a church, and walked out a different man for good. The inquiry records are still in the archives. Witnessed. New documented case every week. Subscribe.