From Atheist & Occultist to Defender of Catholicism: How Our Lady Changed His Life!

Former atheist and occultist William Toro is a Catholic apologist who spends most of his life defending the faith with theological and philosophical arguments.

But it was not always like this.

A few years ago, he stopped being the leader of an atheist association he founded. He instead practiced the occult and tried convincing believers that God was evil. But upon attending a spiritual retreat, something supernatural happened that awakened him to a new life.

From atheist and occultist to defender of the Catholic faith: the Virgin Mary changed his life!

In YouTube interview with Father Byron Cadmen’s “A Millennial Priest,” Toro told his conversion story, leaving a positive message for all those who are far from God.

During a more than hour-long conversation with Father Byron, Toro narrated important aspects of his life, such as a childhood marked by bullying, an adolescence that led him to rebellions and fights, and a youth that found him militant in atheism.

After a long period of studying leading atheist philosophers, he found interest in the occult. Thus, it was already difficult for him to accept that the world was reduced only to the material. However, his interest did not turn precisely to God, but to witchcraft.

He turned to occult practices, dabbled in magic, casted spells. Amid that confusion, however, he discovered love. This was his first step towards God.

The Way to God and His Encounter with the Virgin Mary

“I met my beautiful wife (she was not my wife at the time) and God allowed her to move away from the faith, [and] find me. When we began living a courtship outside of God’s ways, she became pregnant with our son,” Toro says.

While carrying her baby, his girlfriend turned back to God without telling Toro.

“With his family, they formed a prayer group, in which for some time, they prayed the rosary and asked for my conversion,” Toro explains.

One day, his girlfriend asked that he attend a spiritual retreat and, with some distrust of his entire past, he agreed to go. This decision completely changed his life. Toro attended the retreat, and the leading missionary invited everyone to turn to God.

“That retreat was where I tried to challenge God with the humility that I could have at that moment, a grace of humility that God gave me at that moment and I started to say to him: ‘Okay, here I am, you’ve already taken a first step, if you exist, do the rest.'”

But Toro never imagined what would happen.

“That’s where it all started. I saw her there [shows the image of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal]. In front of me came a fog from the ground that covered everything…I got scared, I started shaking, my hand was sweaty, but it was cold. She was up front and she said to me, ‘Son, we’ve been waiting for you.’”

As a “good” atheist, after this mystical experience, he began looking for reasons to conclude that what he saw and heard was not real. But the opposite happened.

“During the entire retreat, I also had a very strong liberation process, in which even Saint Michael the Archangel, Padre Pio of Pietrelcina were present…I had to choose a side.”

And so, after these supernatural experiences, Toro converted to Catholicism and his life completely changed.

“God allows all of this so that others can say, ‘If these scum can do it, so can I.'”