Subtitled Our Journey to the Catholic Church, The Great Discovery, by Ulf and Birgitta Ekman (Ignatius Press, 280pp, £13.75/$17.95 ) is a more unusual story than most. Ulf Ekman was the founder and pastor of Word of Life, a Swedish non-denominational church with a worldwide congregation that grew to 200,000, and both he and his wife had converted to Christianity in 1970 and 1971. Living in secularised Sweden, they had also unconsciously imbibed many prejudices against Catholicism. As Birgitta admitted, when they began to encounter the Church for the first time at the start of the millennium, “we were really not prepared for the strong spirituality in the Catholic Church”. Birgitta discovered a life of St Brigid of Sweden, her namesake. Then she and her husband came across the story of Faustina Kowalska with its Catholic understanding of suffering that could be united with Christ’s on the Cross. The couple visited Rome for the first time in 1999. They read Witness to Hope, George Weigel’s biography of St John Paul II, and came to understand, in Ulf’s words, “what a spiritual giant this man was.” They were taken to see St Peter’s excavated tomb in St Peter’s Basilica, asking themselves the question, “Was there really a Petrine ministry that stretches through time?” Again and again, faced with their ignorance and prejudices, they confessed, “Why has nobody told us that this is the way Catholics believe?” As charismatic Christians, the Ekmans were fortunate to meet charismatic Catholics and to learn from their new friends and from the Church’s own liturgy that “the Spirit and the Church, just like the spirit and body, really belong together”. It is humbling for cradle Catholics to witness the couple’s development in faith which we so often take for granted and which they are experiencing for the first time, such as realising that Catholics venerate Our Lady but do not worship her. Ulf adds: “When I looked through the Bible more carefully, I saw in fact how much there was about Mary.” He notes a conflict between his own form of Pentecostal renewal – “when the new continually replaces the old” – and tradition, the sacred continuity “that is passed on through the generations”. This led to the acceptance that he “could not simply pick and choose among different truths and sift out what I did not like”. The historicity of the Church, her authenticity, her claims about herself and her authority were all examined. As for the Protestant churches, the Ekmans’ reading of the lives of saints such as Padre Pio helped them to accept that “the saints often suffered and were misunderstood … but they did not leave the Church and start their own”. Having come to understand the role of Our Lady, the teaching on purgatory, the particular status of the Pope, the priesthood and transubstantiation, the couple were ready to enter the Church by 2010. Four more years elapsed while they prayed for the best way to leave Word of Life, for whose membership they felt very responsible, at the same time as the Church “drew us with a magnetic force”. It is an inspiring story, well worth reading to remind ourselves of the sacrifices and humble self-examination converts often make in their pursuit of truth.