Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerich

Anna Katharina Emmerick was born in 1774 at Flamske, near Coesfeld in Germany, to a farming family. As a child she tended animals and felt called to religious life, but her father opposed it, and several convents refused her. At one point she gave the money she had saved for her convent dowry to a poor organist's family and worked for them as a servant.

In 1802, aged twenty-eight, she entered the Augustinian convent of Agnetenberg at Dülmen. Life there was hard. She came from a lower social class than the other sisters, she was often ill, and some sisters were suspicious of her. When the convent was closed under Napoleonic rule she took refuge with a poor widow, and from 1813 she was bedridden. Sick and poor people came to her for help.

She died at Dülmen in 1824. John Paul II beatified her in 2004.

Legend and tradition. The sources report that she had ecstasies and visions from childhood. Books of her visions were written down and published by others; these are private accounts, not Church teaching.

She was refused by several convents and treated with suspicion by some of her own sisters, and she spent her last years bedridden. The Catholic Encyclopedia says she nonetheless did her duties cheerfully and faithfully.

The Church has declared Anne Catherine Emmerich Blessed.

Beatification allows public veneration, usually in a particular region or religious family. Canonization extends it to the whole Church.