Vassula Rydén (January 18, 1942 – September 25, 2024) was an author, public speaker, and self-proclaimed Christian mystic[1] living in Switzerland and on the Rhodes island, Greece, who said she received messages from Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary.

[4] 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.

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.

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.

"[15] 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.

[7][15] 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.

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.

[26] 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.

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.

Pavich circulated a critical comparison showing the changes made from the original notebooks to the handwritten edition of True Life in God.

[13] In Skeptical Inquirer magazine in 2011, longtime investigator Joe Nickell compared Rydén's "messages" to alleged communications from Jesus to other women claiming revelations and wrote, "the contrived handwriting, the linguistic lapses, and the indications of fantasizing all suggest that Vassula Ryden is not in touch with supernatural entities but is simply engaging in self-deception that in turn deceives the credulous.

"[33] Nickell says that Rydén's personal misspellings and linguistic errors are identical to those claimed to be written as Jesus, God, Mary, her own invisible "guardian angel, Daniel," and Satan, and all seem to have the same hand writing and grammar.

"[33] According to Nickell, "One suspects that if Ryden were prevented from seeing what was being written, the entities supposedly guiding her hand would be unable to so faithfully follow the lines!

Edward O'Connor and Niels Hvidt believe that God is using Rydén's messages to "consolidate his church" and bring it into unity, which they feel is the main theme of her books.

Dermine described Rydén's early works as promoting a New Age-type spirituality including millennialism and pan-Christian ecumenicism, preceded by a time in which the antichrist dominated the Church.

He said these ideas were heretical to Roman Catholicism, and that Rydén stopped putting them in her writings after warnings from the Church, a factor which demonstrates that they are her own thoughts, not those of spirits.

He showed how Rydén's automatic writings were said by her to be from a variety of sources: guardian angels, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, God, and several Christian saints.

Dermine wrote that automatic writing has never been part of Christian mysticism and divine revelation, but it has been connected with demonic possession.

Moerman said that Laurentin's defense of Rydén included unwarranted caricaturization of CDF leaders, and unsupported positive analysis of her writings.

[43] In November 1996, the CDF issued a press release, stating that the Notification "retains all its force" and "was approved by the competent authorities and will be published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the official organ of the Holy See".

), formed to investigate new religious movements and sects, published a two-part bulletin critical of Rydén and her followers, authored by Mónica de López Roda.

[11] De López Roda named supporters such as Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo and Father René Laurentin who reportedly questioned the directives of the 1995 Notification by the Holy See.

Referring to the 1995 Notification, he said Rydén "certainly did not" operate with the approval of the Church and that "the advice to Catholics is not to attend her gatherings due to the suspect nature of her alleged revelations, which contain doctrinal errors.

He had thought the CDF was satisfied, but [47] in a letter dated January 25, 2007, the new Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal William Levada, following continued requests for clarifications on the writings and activities of Rydén, wrote to the Catholic hierarchy around the world stating that "the Notification of 1995 remains valid as a doctrinal judgment" of the writings, which should be seen as her own personal meditations and that Catholics should not take part in prayer groups established by Rydén.

[32][47][48][49] Cardinal Grech reviewed Heaven is Real But So is Hell: An Eyewitness Account of What is to Come in 2014 and said it was an autobiography and apologia in the apocalyptic genre.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate "denounce[d] from the Mother Church" Rydén and her organization, "True Life In God", and refused "ecclesiastical communion" to those involved.

[54] Pio announced on 3 May 2012, "I am going to close the website at the end of May and unfortunately, since I do not have the means financially nor mentally to face another lawsuit, no matter how ridiculous it is, I am constrained to hand over the domain name to Vassula in June 2012.

[56] In 1998, Rydén's True Life In God Foundation initiated the Beth Myriam (Mary's House) project to feed the poor.

[57] Rydén has made speaking appearances in a Buddhist Temple in Hiroshima, Japan in 1999, in Benin, Africa in 2000, and at a Christian Unity conference "United in Christ" at Namur, Belgium in 2009.