The widowed von Speyr continued to raise Niklaus and Arnold on her own and to practice medicine. In 1936, Emil Dürr’s friend and colleague Werner Kaegi—who knew the boys and wanted to help bring them up—proposed marriage, and she accepted. Kaegi, a lifelong member of the Swiss Reformed Church, encouraged von Speyr to explore Catholicism, and she converted in 1940. Von Speyr’s daughter-in-law Lore Dürr-Freckmann recalls that the couple provided financially for single mothers and opened their home to disadvantaged women and children. Between 1952 and 1967, the Kaegi family also offered a room in their house to Father Hans Urs von Balthasar.