Vassula Rydén (January 18, 1942 – September 25, 2024) was an author, public speaker, and alleged Christian mystic who lived in Switzerland and on the island of Rhodes, Greece, and claimed to have received messages from Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Her writings frequently call for people "to repent, love God, and unify the churches." She developed a large following, particularly among Roman Catholics, who came to her lectures purchasing her writings and tapes. She wrote the messages in English, and changed some writings between editions.
In 1995, the Catholic Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, published a Notification (a message from the Holy See) on the writings of Rydén, saying her communications should not be considered supernatural, and calling all Catholic bishops to prevent Rydén's ideas from being spread in their dioceses. In 2007, Cardinal William Levada confirmed that the 1995 Notification was still in effect; he recommended that Catholics should not join prayer groups organized by Rydén. In 2011, the Greek Orthodox Church officially disapproved of Rydén's teachings, instructing their faithful to disassociate from Rydén. In 2012, the Church of Cyprus said that Rydén's teachings were heretical.
Personal life Rydén was born Vassiliki Claudia Pendakis on January 18, 1942, in Heliopolis on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt, the daughter of Greek Orthodox parents established in Egypt. Ryden says that from the age of six, she experienced waking dreams and nightmares that she attributed to Satan who was trying to kill her. When she was 10–12 years old, she had waking dreams of a spiritual marriage with Jesus Christ, as Blessed Virgin Mary was looking on.
Rydén started school in Egypt, and then at the age of 15, she emigrated with her family to Europe. She painted and competed in tennis. During her late teens, she said she was surrounded upon occasion by the spirits of dead people, who she said were asking her to help them. None of her childhood or teenage mystical experiences resulted in a personal religious transformation, and Rydén went on to live a fairly secular life indifferent to religion.
In November 1966, she married a Lutheran man in the city of Lausanne, Switzerland, at a Greek Orthodox Church. Her husband was a student who obtained a position with the United Nations after graduation. The couple had two sons together. Because of the husband's job, the family lived in various places in Asia and Africa. From 1966 to 1980, Rydén kept up an active social life. She did not practice any particular religion. The couple was divorced in Sweden in November 1980.
On June 13, 1981, she married her second husband, Per Rydén, a Swedish Lutheran who had been working for the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) in Mozambique. He took a new position with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) department of the United Nations in Lesotho from 1981 to 1983, then worked again for SIDA from 1984 to 1987 in Bangladesh. Rydén modeled as a hobby, and painted in oils. She also competed in tennis, once winning the women's doubles in a national tournament in Bangladesh. On October 31, 1990, the Rydéns celebrated their existing union in the Greek Orthodox Church in Lausanne. Per Rydén died July 15, 2021.
Writings
In November 1985 when Rydén was living in Bangladesh, she said she experienced an extraordinary sensation when writing a grocery list, a list of cocktail party expenses, Originally published on www.infovassula.ch in the Italian language. or a list of errands. Rydén says she suddenly experienced a light electrical feeling in her right hand and, at the same time, an invisible presence. She was unable to open her hand or lift her arm. She said "an invisible force pushed my hand. I was not afraid, I do not know why." She says she permitted her hand to be guided and that she wrote a line in a very different style from her own with the words: "I am your guardian Angel and my name is Daniel." Rydén says that this guardian Angel prepared her for three months to become a conduit of spiritual messages.Jovanovic 1997, p. 291. After a few weeks of such training, Rydén says she had a vision and message from Jesus Christ.
Rydén also received messages from what she says is the Devil. An evil presence had moved her hand to write, sometimes making her write sensible words. She said that Jesus taught her to discern which spirits were engaging her in the writing of messages, and that the Devil's hand thus became recognizable to her.
After six months of receiving messages, Rydén said she was directed by her guardian angel to find a local American priest named James "Jim" Fannan and tell him about her experiences. First, though, she encountered a German priest named Karl who said she was mentally imbalanced and should consult a doctor. After several more visits from Rydén, Karl summoned Fannan and the two priests watched Rydén at times when she says she received messages. Fannan's initial response was that the messages were not from God but were some evil spirit. Fannan instructed Rydén to refuse the messages.Rydén 2013, pp. 64–68. Distraught, Rydén went home and asked her guardian angel for guidance about Fannan; she says that God told her "I will bend him." In early 1987, Fannan told Rydén to speak with the priest Raymond Dujarrier. Preparing to travel to Dujarrier, Rydén says she received an evil message: "A liar was guiding you, collect everything and burn it." Seconds later, Rydén says she felt the presence of God who guided her hand to write: "I will be with you till the end, we are united forever; let My Light shine on you child; I am Yahweh guiding you; glorify Me by loving Me..." Dujarrier assessed the messages as "Divine Revelations of the Heart", and he told Rydén they were given to her to benefit others. After Dujarrier's positive evaluation, Fannan changed his mind and became Rydén's first ardent supporter in the Catholic church. He served as her spiritual adviser, occasionally traveling with her to introduce her to new groups.
In August 1987, Rydén's husband began working for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the Rydén family moved to Switzerland.Rydén 2013, pp. 79, 100. Rydén showed her messages to various Roman Catholic and Orthodox priests in Switzerland but met with little support. At Fannan's urging, in June 1988 Rydén visited the city of Medjugorje in Bosnia and Herzegovina, to learn more about Our Lady of Medjugorje—the alleged apparition of the Virgin Mary, which six children there claimed to have received.Rydén 1990, p. xx. Foreword by James Fannan. In November 1988, Rydén was directed by her guardian angel to publish a book of the collected messages, and to conduct prayer meetings once a month. Theologian and sociologist Patrick de Laubier became interested in Rydén's messages, and introduced her to French Mariologist Father René Laurentin in August 1989. Laurentin and Fannan were both in the Marian Movement of Priests, a group of priests who studied modern apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Rydén is best known for a collection of nearly 2,000 of these messages published worldwide in many languages as True Life in God. She adhered to the idea that she had been called to transmit to the world the messages she received. However, Rydén never published the first ten months' worth of received messages. In 1993, Laurentin said that Rydén planned to publish the first messages. In 1995, Dominican theologian Father François-Marie Dermine, a Canadian-born priest serving as exorcist for the diocese of Bologna, Italy, wrote that Rydén said that she burned the early messages because there were too many, and they were loose scraps, not bound in a notebook. Dermine says that this destruction of the first messages is suspicious, as there would normally be heightened reverence held for them, if they were messages from angels and Jesus. Rydén wrote in 1995 that she destroyed or discarded the first messages.
Rydén says that prior to writing the messages, she had never studied catechism or theological formation. Rydén believed that God chose her, a "spiritual zero" before the revelations began, so as to leave no doubt that it was His power at work. She stated that: "Jesus wanted a nothing... in order to prove that I have not invented all this and that it comes from Him. He said it in a message: 'All you have comes from Me and is My Work and not yours. Without Me, you are unable to even wink your eyes-so abandon yourself to Me.'"
Rydén's first "handwritten" edition of True Life in God were produced in 1990 by Catholic publisher Editions O.E.I.L. of Paris, with a foreword written by Fannan. In 1991, the organization called Trinitas was formed to typeset Rydén's writings and publish them in many languages. In September 1991, Mariologist Father Philip Pavich was given a copy of Rydén's original messages complete with deletions and modifications showing how Rydén and an editorial assistant had modified the messages for publication. Pavich circulated a critical comparison showing the changes made from the original notebooks to the handwritten edition of True Life in God. Associates of Rydén questioned her; she responded by saying that the deleted text was "taken out with God's guidance." She explained that she keeps two notebooks: a private one filled with original messages, and a public one containing material rewritten from the private notebook. Dermine wrote in 2008 that the deleted material includes failed prophecies, and disappointments in Rydén's life, such as the Virgin Mary telling Rydén in June 1988 that she would arrange a meeting between Rydén and Marian Movement of Priests founder Stefano Gobbi—a meeting that never happened.
Rydén asked American Jesuit Father Mitchell Pacwa to review her messages, so he studied the first five volumes of handwritten messages. Pacwa sent his critique to Father Michael O'Carroll, one of Rydén's spiritual advisors, who said that Pacwa ought to refrain from publishing his findings, and implied divine retribution otherwise. Condensed from a larger article appearing in Catholic Twin Circle spanning three issues in August 1993. Pacwa had determined that Rydén's own confused interpretation of the Trinity was echoed in the messages she received, showing that it was Rydén making the messages. Pacwa published his criticism in August 1993, arguing that Rydén and her messages both confused the roles of God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit. Rydén had written in her own hand the explanatory note, "Jesus in this whole passage mentions the Father Himself as the Son and the Holy Spirit showing the action and the presence of the Holy Trinity," which Pacwa said demonstrated a "muddled, if not heretical" understanding of the Trinity. Pacwa listed many similar instances in the received messages of the Son and the Father being intermixed and confused in a manner not in keeping with Roman Catholic or Orthodox Catholic teaching. Years later, Dermine described the reaction of O'Carroll as typical of the Rydén organization's response to criticism—a demonization of any who oppose Rydén.
Rydén's messages are believed by her followers to have been prophetic. The Holy See instructs Catholics that the messages should be considered Rydén's personal meditations, and not divine revelations.
Handwriting