Alphonse-Marie Eppinger
German religious (1814-1867)
Alphonse-Marie Eppinger (9 September 1814 – 31 July 1867), SDR, born Elisabeth Eppinger, was a French Catholic nun and the founder of the Sisters of the Divine Redeemer.
Eppinger's cause for sainthood was opened on 30 August 2005 and she was declared Venerable on 19 December 2011 after Pope Benedict XVI confirmed her life of heroic virtue. Pope Francis confirmed a miracle attributed to her in 2018; the beatification was celebrated in Strasbourg on 9 September 2018.
Life
Élisabeth Eppinger was born in France on 9 September 1814 as the eldest of eleven children to poor farmers. She suffered from various ailments during her childhood and was noted for her ardent faith in God.
Her parish priest Jean-David Reichard (1796–1867) knew of her desire to establish a religious congregation and aided her in finding companions for her project. In 1846 she saw a vision of Jesus Christ and this began a series of ecstasies she soon became known as "the Niederbronn Ecstatic". But Reichard also learned of her ecstasies and felt obligated to inform his bishop of this. The Bishop of Strasbourg Andreas Raess heard of her from Reichard and met her in July 1848 to conduct tests and interviews with her while being convinced of her intentions to serve the ill and the poor. Raess also believed that God had called Eppinger for a special mission.
“Alphonse-Marie Eppinger” enters the record as german religious (1814-1867). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Alphonse-Marie, Eppinger and German can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q543572. VIAF identifies the subject as 9993774. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1814, 1867, 2005 and 2011.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alphonse-Marie Eppinger” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.