Pope Francis Urges Christians Not to Try to Convert Nonbelievers

Pope Francis said Wednesday that trying to convince someone to become a Christian is a “pagan” activity unworthy of followers of Christ.

“To evangelize is not to proselytize,” the pope told crowds gathered in the Vatican for his weekly general audience. “To proselytize is something pagan, it is neither religious nor evangelical.”

“This is not about proselytism, as I said, so that others become ‘one of us’ – no, this is not Christian,” he reiterated. “It is about loving so that they might be happy children of God.”

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, proselytizing means “to try to persuade someone to change their religious or political beliefs or way of living to your own.”

Proselytism — or the attempt to convert others to one’s faith — is different from evangelization, the pope has proposed, which is the joyful witness of one’s experience of Christ.

“You know your contemporaries, you know that many are alone, that many do not know Jesus,” Francis told young people gathered for a national Catholic youth conference in 2019. “Go, go and bring the Lord, go and fill your environments, even the digital, but not of convictions, not to convince, not to proselytize, but to witness to the tenderness and mercy of Jesus.”