Oscar Wilde Converted To Catholicism On His Deathbed In A Parisian Hotel Room

All of Wilde's adult life, Catholicism had piqued his curiosity. At the age of 20, Wilde moved to Oxford University in England, where the critic and author Walter Pater tutored him. Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854 to a Protestant Anglo-Irish family. Pater had an impact on Wilde, who started going to Mass often and developed an artistic fascination with the mystique of Catholic ritual. David Hunter-Blair, a new convert who was one of Wilde's acquaintances, paid for Wilde to travel to Rome and attend a meeting with Pope Pius IX. Hunter-Blair hoped to convert Wilde, but it seems that this intimate encounter with the perilous Catholic Church merely inspired Wilde to a sort of amorous frenzy.

The Catholic Church continues to uphold gay behavior as a sin. However, soon before his death in Paris in 1900, three years after his release from jail, Wilde—who had been brought up in a Protestant family—decided to become a Catholic. The "highest and most romantic" of religions, according to Wilde, has captivated him his entire life. In 1877, he had an encounter with Pope Pius IX. "I'm not a Catholic," Wilde had joked earlier in life. I am only a ferocious Papist.