There are paths where Providence leads through rough ways. Sara Penim is an example of this. Born and raised among the Jehovah's Witnesses, with a mother who became the first adherent in her town, she grew up in a climate of intense proselytism: early reading, public speaking, Sunday door-to-door visits, "Theocratic Ministry School" as soon as one can read. Very young, she already kept a monthly "report" of missionary effectiveness: hours of activity, magazines distributed, visits made. At fourteen, baptism and advancement to the rank of "auxiliary pioneer", the first degree of a path that requires, depending on the level, dozens of monthly hours of preaching, up to the "special pioneer" financially supported by the organization.
This conditioning has a human cost. Sara's adolescence was marked by isolation, school bullying, strict dress codes, the prohibition of parties and birthdays, and the obsession with Armageddon. She later served in distant "territories", convinced she was helping very poor populations by bringing them the doctrine. It was there that she met, for the first time, a fervent Catholic whose prayer to the Holy Virgin troubled her. This young woman was reading the "Salve Regina" while crying. Sara, then sure of herself, repeated that "praying to Mary is worship". Yet, this scene remained engraved in her memory.
At the heart of the system, anti-Catholicism is structural. Internal publications identify "Babylon the Great" with the Catholic Church and depict the destruction of our churches. In Sara's eyes, it was still better to "go out into the world" than to become Catholic. They inculcate that salvation is found only "in the organization" on the day of Armageddon, with the "Governing Body" setting doctrine and discipline. To challenge this body is to be an "apostate". "Disfellowshipping" (exclusion) operates through judicial committees of three "elders" before whom one confesses one's faults in detail, followed by the public announcement of the name: from then on, even a mother must no longer speak to the excluded one. For years, they invoked a verse from Saint Paul to forbid even a simple hello. Recently, an "adjustment" has allowed greetings... without however restoring friendship. The heart of the practice remains the same: cutting ties.
Another deadly stumbling block: the prohibition of blood transfusions. Sara recounts the drama of an 18-year-old girl, suffering from sickle cell anemia, who died for lack of a transfusion. The parents never overcame this loss. Yet Scripture mentions the prohibition of "ingesting" blood (symbolic of life) but does not equate this with a transfusion; and in cases of survival, even ritual prescriptions gave way, life taking precedence over symbol. Here again, the instrumentalized letter crushes the person.
Then comes the doctrinal question. Jehovah's Witnesses deny the Holy Trinity: God would have "created" Jesus, who would be a creature who later cooperated in creation, and "the Holy Spirit" would be merely an impersonal force. To support this, their "New World Translation" alters key passages. In John 1:1, the Word becomes "a god". In John 8:58, where Christ proclaims: "Before Abraham was, I AM", they reduce the formula to the banal "I have existed already", erasing the revelation of the divine Name. Sara confesses that upon discovering the gravity of these alterations, she felt betrayed.
Another part of the edifice cracked with the question of higher education. Long discouraged on the grounds that "if the end is near", five years of university would be "of the world". However, very recently, an internal bulletin admitted that in many places, education is needed to support one's family. Many, at forty, find themselves with precarious jobs because of this ideological lock, now "adjusted" without explanation. For Sara, this opportunistic plasticity of "doctrinal changes" was an additional shock.
How did the Catholic door open? Through an intervention of grace during a professional event in São Paulo. During a conference, a speaker recounted events from his life where the hand of God had manifested as saving "knots". Sara was boiling inside: "I prayed, and God did not protect me!" After leaving the room, a colleague said a decisive phrase to her: "If God had answered you at that time, would you have left that place?" This reversal disarmed her. Invited to try Mass, she enters Our Lady of Brazil. Even before understanding, she cries, seized by a presence. A priest directs her to the Opus Dei, where a faithful woman gives her a rosary and teaches her to pray. Sara warns: "I don't believe in it". Response: "Do it." She recites the Rosary every day, at first with her notes, without "feeling" or understanding everything. Gradually, a burning desire to return to church is born. At every Mass, the tears return.
The time comes to ask for a priest. Providence leads her to Fr. Celso, who entrusts her to a couple of former Witnesses who returned to the Catholic faith. There, she meets Douglas Ribeiro, once a figure in her original milieu, now a catechist, who accompanies her humanly and doctrinally until the Easter Vigil, where she receives baptism. She says it clearly: one does not emerge unscathed from such a system. A community, spiritual accompaniment, and emotional healing are needed. She herself continues to study the Catechism, to learn, and participates in a support group for ex-Witnesses.
This testimony took place during a program by Professor Eduardo Faria on the channel Catolicismo Blindado. The professor also recalls, as a useful historical reference, how in the 19th century, in the United States, Mormons, Adventists, and Jehovah's Witnesses emerged in an ideological climate (the "manifest destiny") mixing millenarian expectations and the certainty of being the "final revelation". He emphasizes that this movement is not primarily theological but sociological, and that a Catholic must know how to respond to the "ready-to-use" verses presented to them.
During the program, messages of support arrive: contributions from viewers, testimonies from ex-elders, childhood friends who had known Sara in preaching and rejoice at her departure. A recurring theme emerges: freedom regained, not a lawless freedom, but the freedom of the children of the Church, where truth is confessed without mutilating Scripture, where mercy lifts up without cutting family ties, where human life takes precedence over misunderstood literalist readings.
What Sara discovered upon crossing the threshold of a church, before any explanation, was the presence. Then, through study, the harmony of the Catholic faith: Jesus true God and true man; the Holy Spirit, a divine Person; the communion of saints and the prayer of the Rosary; confession that heals in secret; the Mass where the Sacrifice of Christ becomes present. And above all the Church, not "Babylon", but a Mother who welcomes, heals, teaches, and guides.
What can we take away? First, that learned anti-Catholicism can be undone by the clarity of doctrine and concrete charity. Next, that sectarian mechanisms—family exclusions, internal tribunals, textual manipulations—crush souls; therefore, safe places for reintegration must be offered. Finally, that God knows how to use the "knots" of our lives to deliver us. To those who still hesitate, a simple invitation: "Come and see"; attend Mass, pray fifty Hail Marys with confidence, and let grace do its work.