Newton Leroy “Newt” Gingrich is an American politician and author who served as the 50th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999.  
A member of the Republican Party, he was the U.S. Representative for Georgia’s 6th congressional district serving north Atlanta and nearby areas from 1979 until his
resignation in 1999.

In 2012, Gingrich was a candidate for the presidential nomination of his party.

A professor of history and geography at the University of West Georgia in the 1970s, Gingrich won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in November 1978, the first Republican in the history of Georgia’s 6th congressional district to do so. He served as House Minority Whip from 1989 to 1995. A co-author and architect of the “Contract with America”, Gingrich was a major leader in the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional election. In 1995, Time named him “Man of the Year” for “his role in ending the four-decades-long Democratic majority in the House”.

Since leaving the House, Gingrich has remained active in public policy debates and worked as a political consultant. He founded and chaired several policy think tanks,  including American Solutions for Winning the Future.  

Raised as a Lutheran, Gingrich was a Southern Baptist in graduate school. He converted to Catholicism on March 29, 2009. He said: “over the course of several years, I gradually became Catholic and then decided one day to accept the faith I had already come to embrace”. He decided to officially become a Catholic when he saw Pope Benedict XVI, during the Pope’s visit to the United States in 2008: “Catching a glimpse of Pope Benedict that day, I was struck by the happiness and peacefulness he exuded.  The joyful and radiating presence of the Holy Father was a moment of confirmation about the many things I had been thinking and experiencing for several years.” Newt and Callista Gingrich reside much of the year in Rome, Italy, where she serves as U.S.  Ambassador to the Holy See since October of 2017.