Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich

Anne Catherine Emmerich, CRV (also Anna Katharina Emmerick; 8 September 1774 – 9 February 1824) was a Roman 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 been a bedridden nun. Emmerich purportedly experienced visions on the life and Passion of Jesus Christ as revealed to her by the Blessed Virgin Mary under religious ecstasy. During her bedridden years, a number of well-known figures were inspired to visit her. The poet Clemens Maria Brentano interviewed her at length and wrote several pages based on his notes of her visions. The authenticity of Brentano's writings has been questioned, and critics have characterized the books as "conscious elaborations by a poet". Pope John Paul II beatified Emmerich on 3 October 2004, highlighting her personal virtues and Catholic piety. The purported “House of the Virgin Mary” in Ephesus is piously associated to her name. Emmerich was born into a family of impoverished farmers and had nine brothers and sisters. The family's surname was derived from an ancestral town. From an early age, she helped with the house and farm work. Her schooling was rather brief, but all those who knew her noticed that she felt drawn to prayer from an early age. At twelve, she started to work at a large farm in the vicinity for three years and later learned to be a seamstress and worked as such for several years. She applied for admission to various convents, but she was rejected because she could not afford a dowry. Eventually, the Order of Saint Clare in Münster agreed to accept her, provided she would learn to play the musical organ.