Now president of the Society for Truth and Justice and a state Senate candidate in Florida, Terry, 46, told the National Catholic Register that his conversion began when he became friends with Catholic clergy.
"They told me that the farther you go in Reformation theology, the more you end up in Catholicism and liturgy," Terry told the newspaper, a conservative independent weekly.
Terry ran Operation Rescue, a group that frequently blocked entrances to abortion clinics, from 1987 until the mid-1990s. He told the newspaper that a string of lawsuits by abortion-rights organizations led him to file for bankruptcy in 1998. He also divorced and remarried.
In 2005, Terry thrust himself into the high-profile Terry Schiavo situation, siding with Schiavo's parents as they conducted an unsuccessful fight to keep their brain-damaged daughter alive.
Terry said he had always been impressed by his Catholic friends' devotion to fighting abortion.
"I would look at my evangelical friends, who would come and go from the pro-life movement. They would proclaim undying devotion for pro-life activism and then later disappear. Then I would look at my Roman Catholic friends who would never swerve. That had a tremendous magnetism for me," Terry said.
After overcoming the "hurdles" of papal infallibility, Marian dogma and purgatory, Terry was confirmed in the Catholic faith during Holy Week at a church in Binghamton, N.Y.
Terry, a Republican who ran for Congress in New York in 1998, said he hopes his evangelical and Catholic ties will be an asset in his political career.
"My wife says that I am bilingual -- I can speak both languages," Terry said.
