Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774–1824) was the daughter of poor German peasants. Despite years of refusal because of her poverty, she eventually entered the Augustinian convent at Agnetenberg, Dülmen, in 1802. When Napoleon dissolved the convent in 1811, she took shelter in a small private house in Dülmen, where she would spend the rest of her life — for the most part bedridden, suffering from a variety of progressive ailments.
Beginning in 1812 she received the stigmata: the five wounds of Christ, the crown-of-thorns wound, and a chest-cross. They bled. From 1813 she ceased to take any food except a daily portion of water and the Eucharist. From her bed of pain she dictated extensive visions of the life of Christ, the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the lives of the Old Testament patriarchs, and the bitter Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ — recorded by the German poet Clemens Brentano, who lived in Dülmen for the last five years of Anne Catherine's life specifically to record her dictation. Her recorded visions of Mary's House at Ephesus were later used (in 1881) to locate what is now known as the House of the Virgin Mary at Ephesus, which has become a Marian pilgrimage site.
Beatified by John Paul II on October 3, 2004. The cause for her canonisation continues.