In 1940, after recovering from a heart attack, she was introduced by a friend to Father Hans Urs von Balthasar, a Jesuit priest then serving as a university chaplain in Basel. She told him of her interest in entering the Catholic Church, and he began to give her catechetical instruction. Von Balthasar says of this process, “In the instructions she understood everything immediately, as though she had only—and for how long!—waited to hear exactly what I was saying in order to affirm it.” Von Speyr praised the Jesuit for having “removed all the obstacles for me” in prayer. She was received into the Catholic Church on All Saints’ Day, November 1, 1940.  After the liturgy, von Speyr apologized for having accidentally omitted the words “extra quam nulla salus” during the profession of faith; when von Balthasar and her husband both replied that they had heard the phrase, she remarked, “Then maybe an angel said it for me”. Still, some scholars have criticized her for leaving out this portion of the profession. She was confirmed shortly after her reception into the Church, with the critic and translator Albert Béguin as her sponsor.