Biography

Adrienne von Speyr was born in 1902 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. Raised in a French-speaking Calvinist home, Adrienne knew from an early age that “God is different.” Talented, outspoken, and determined, she overcame numerous obstacles to graduate from medical school and become one of Switzerland’s first female physicians. Her life-long search for the face of God – a search she shared with her beloved first husband until his untimely death in 1934 – culminated in the realization that God had been searching for her. Her conversion to Catholicism in 1940, which scandalized the Protestant upper crust of her adopted hometown of Basle,

marked the turning-point in her life. From now on, she would become a living embodiment of the ecclesial attitude: total transparency before God in the spirit of Mary. Rooted in the heart of the Church, she collaborated with her confessor, Hans Urs von Balthasar, to develop a Catholic work centered on participation in Trinitarian love and devoted to living heaven on the earth. Adrienne died in September, 1967 after years of intense suffering offered without complaint for the needs of the Church and the world.