Emmerich, Anna Katharina, 1774-1824

Anne Catherine Emmerich, CRV (also Anna Katharina Emmerick; 8 September 1774 – 9 February 1824) was a Catholic Augustinian canoness of the Congregation of Windesheim. During her lifetime, she was a mystic, Marian visionary and stigmatist. Emmerich was born in Flamschen, an impoverished farming community at Coesfeld, in the Diocese of Münster, Westphalia, Germany, and died in Dülmen (aged 49), where she had lived, bedridden, as a nun. Emmerich purportedly experienced visions of the life and Passion of Jesus Christ, revealed to her by the Blessed Virgin Mary during religious ecstasy. During her bedridden years, a number of well-known contemporaries visited her. The poet Clemens Maria Brentano interviewed her at length and wrote several pages, based on his notes of her description of the visions. The authenticity of Brentano's writings has been questioned, and critics have characterized the books as "conscious elaborations by a poet". Writing in L'Osservatore Romano, Jose Saraiva Martins declared the writings attributed to her the "artistic fantasy of Brentano". Pope John Paul II beatified Emmerich on 3 October 2004, highlighting her notable virtues and deep Catholic piety. The purported “House of the Virgin Mary” in Ephesus is piously associated with her name.