THE VATICAN: The 19th-century German nun whose visions of Jesus's death inspired Mel Gibson's film The Passion of The Christ will soon be on the path to sainthood, Catholic Church officials have said.
Sister Anne Catherine Emmerich, a sickly mystic who lived from 1774 to 1824, has already reached near cult status among traditionalist Roman Catholics for her book, which gave Gibson the gruesome details the Gospels did not provide.
The Vatican says Pope John Paul II will beatify Sister Emmerich for her virtuous life, not her bestselling book, but the October 3rd ceremony will further publicise her Passion accounts, which some critics denounce as medieval and anti-Semitic. "Beatification will almost certainly be interpreted as approval of them," Father John O'Malley, a church historian, wrote disapprovingly in the US Jesuit weekly America.
Bishop Reinhard Lettmann announced the beatification date last week in his Münster diocese in western Germany, where Sister Emmerich lived.
Bishop Lettmann stressed how the nun had strengthened others in their faith despite her own frailty, a theme dear to the Pope, who struggles on at 84 despite Parkinson's disease.
Although Gibson said his blockbuster was true to the Gospels, he clearly turned to Sister Emmerich's The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ for some striking scenes.
The episode where Mary mops up her son's blood after his scourging comes straight from the book. No Gospel mentions a hooded devil inciting Jews to demand Christ's crucifixion or following him as he carried his cross.
"Amazing images - she supplied me with stuff I never would have thought of," Gibson told an interviewer this year.