Anne Catherine Emmerich

Who was Anne Catherine Emmerich?

Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich was a Roman Catholic Augustinian Canoness Regular of Windesheim, stigmatic, mystic, visionary and ecstatic.

She was born in Flamschen, a farming community at Coesfeld, in the Diocese of Münster, Westphalia, Germany, and died at age 49 in Dülmen, where she had been a nun, and later became bedridden.

During her bedridden years, a number of well-known figures were inspired to visit her. The poet Clemens Brentano interviewed her at length and wrote two books 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" and a "well-intentioned fraud" by Brentano.

Emmerich was beatified on October 3, 2004 by Pope John Paul II. However, the Vatican focused on her own personal piety and set the books written by Brentano aside while analysing the cause for her beatification, given that "It is absolutely not certain that she ever wrote this".