A convert’s story: "I saw Mary's face"

Claire Koç was born in Çigdem, Turkey, into an Alevi family (1), the country's largest religious minority, accounting for around 10-15% of the population. "On Thursday evenings, my mother would light candles facing the sun as it was setting, to ask for its protection for her children and family," she recalls. But the little girl was not really brought up, either in education or practice, in this branch of Islam. The family fled persecution for France, where Claire Koç encountered the Virgin Mary.

At the age of 6, on her way home from school, she saw a church whose door was open. "I went in, took a few steps, saw Mary's face … I had to rely on faith, but something did happen," she recounts. She continued to enter churches to "soak up the atmosphere, see the candles lit and melt into the silence."

"It took me thirty years to convert, because I didn't feel legitimate," she explains. It was finally the new experience of motherhood, at the age of 36, that made her take the big step. It was a long road, according to Claire, who describes herself as "a self-taught Catholic". Then Covid almost prevented her baptism. She had decided to get baptized just after the pandemic arrived, but when restrictions were lifted she realized that some of her family and friends opposed her conversion.

"At best, I'm branded as crazy, and at worst as a fundamentalist because I don't fit in with the current religious norms," she laments. Hence the feeling that being Catholic in France can be seen as a stigma. "We live in a society that claims to be progressive and open-minded, but that remains intolerant when we don't fit in with the new social norms", she says.

Claire Koç's testimonial

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(1) Alevism is a branch of Islam