VATICAN CITY (Zenit): The German mystic whose recorded visions helped inspire Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ, will be beatified on October 3.
Anna Katharina Emmerick (1774-1824) will be beatified at the Vatican along with Karl I (1887-1922), the last Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary.
Sr Emmerick, an Augustinian religious and a native of Westphalia, “bore the stigmata of the Lord’s Passion and received extraordinary charisms that she used for the consolation of numerous visitors”, said Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, who is prefect of the Congregation for Sainthood Causes, at the decree of recognition of a miracle last July.
Clemens Brentano, a German writer, met her, was converted, and remained at the foot of her bed copying the visionary’s accounts from 1818-24.
The result was the book The Bitter Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. That work, in addition to the Gospels, helped inspire Mel Gibson in the making of The Passion of the Christ.
Karl I, who was proclaimed Emperor of Austria in 1916, abdicated in November 1918, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell.
He spent his exile on the Portuguese island of Madeira, where he died at age 34.
