Alphonse-Marie Eppinger

Elisabeth Eppinger, known in religion as Mother Alphonse-Marie, was born on 9 September 1814 in Niederbronn-les-Bains in Alsace, then part of France. She was the eldest child of a modest farming family; her parents were Jean-Georges Eppinger and Barbara Stenger. From childhood she was noted for piety and for a strong sense of compassion toward the sick and the poor, while her own health remained fragile. She received little formal schooling and spent her youth in domestic and farm work. In early adulthood she reported intense interior trials and mystical experiences, including visions of Christ, which she and her spiritual advisers interpreted as a call to a life of prayer united with practical charity.

In the 1840s, with the support of the parish priest of Niederbronn, Jean-David Reichard, and the authorization of the Bishop of Strasbourg, André Raess, she gathered companions to nurse the sick in their homes, instruct children, and assist the destitute, especially in rural districts poorly served by hospitals. The community was established in 1849 as the Congregation of the Sisters of the Divine Redeemer (Congrégation des Sœurs du Très Saint-Rédempteur), often called the Sisters of Niederbronn. Elisabeth took the religious name Alphonse-Marie, combining devotion to Saint Alphonsus Liguori with devotion to the Virgin Mary, and she became the first superior of the institute. The sisters took simple vows and combined contemplative prayer with itinerant nursing and parish work.

Under her direction the congregation spread through Alsace and into neighbouring German-speaking regions. Sisters were sent to care for victims of epidemics and to staff small rural infirmaries and schools. Mother Alphonse-Marie was regarded by contemporaries as a mystic and a spiritual guide; she stressed redemptive suffering joined to Christ and insisted that charity toward the abandoned was the congregation’s distinctive work. She formed novices, wrote spiritual notes for her sisters, and governed the community despite repeated illness. The institute received diocesan approval in her lifetime and later pontifical recognition after her death.

She died in Niederbronn-les-Bains on 31 July 1867. The congregation continued to expand in Europe and later on other continents. A cause for beatification was introduced in the twentieth century. Pope Benedict XVI declared her Venerable on 19 December 2011, recognizing the heroic character of her virtues. She was beatified on 9 September 2018 in Strasbourg Cathedral; Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu presided in the name of Pope Francis. She has not been canonized. Historical knowledge of her life rests mainly on congregational archives, contemporary ecclesiastical correspondence, and the documentation assembled for the beatification process.