The Voice of Silence is the autobiography of a remarkable woman who has sought life’s enduring values throughout her extraordinary circumstances, both tragic and wonderful. Crafted in evocative prose, she offers her views on healing, spirituality and love, and shares deeply compelling insight on how the three are eternally intertwined—and most easily found in silence.
“I have been led into arenas I never dreamed of as a child, a million light years from the dreams I had in my mother’s kitchen,” Oonagh reflects. And her extraordinary life could not be expressed with greater humility.
Born and raised in rural Ireland, Oonagh Shanley entered a convent at the tender age of sixteen, embarking on a lifelong spiritual quest. For the next twenty years, Oonagh remained a nun, training as a nurse and ministering to the elderly in India. It was here that she came to know Mother Teresa and answered the call to care for young mothers—a pursuit that necessitated leaving her order. Gaining special papal dispensation, she suddenly found herself in the outside world with nothing but a change of clothes, little money and a tremendous yearning for freedom and discovery.
Following many new and exciting experiences in Paris, she was asked to nurse the ailing Duke of Windsor, whom she cared for until his death. Later, in London, she became Princess Diana’s spiritual guide and healer. Oonagh’s genuine empathy enabled her to form her own unique perceptions of these royal and complex personalities, which she shares in loving detail.
Oonagh also explored her own life’s journey—meeting and marrying Joseph Toffolo, suffering and learning from serious illness, studying acupuncture in China long before it became fashionable, and being photographed by the renowned British photographer and award-winning filmmaker, Lord Snowdon, a photo of whose graces the cover of this indelible memoir.
