Pope Beatifies Nun Who Inspired Mel Gibson’s ‘Passion’
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VATICAN CITY – Pope John Paul II yesterday honored two figures linked to controversy, beatifying a German mystic whose violent visions of Christ’s suffering helped inspire Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” and an Austrian emperor whose troops used poison gas.
Beatification is the last formal step in the Catholic Church before the possible conferring of sainthood, and John Paul has now beatified a record 1,338 faithful in his quest to give believers new models of sanctity.
Before some 30,000 people, including royalty and government representatives from Latin America and Europe, the pontiff also beatified an Italian nun who worked with sick children in Latin America, a French contemplative monk, and a French priest who founded an order of nuns.
But it was the choices of mystical Sister Anna Katharina Emmerick and Karl I, who led Austria through the last years of World War I, that have stirred controversy. Emmerick, a sickly, virtually illiterate nun whose powers of visualization were notable as a child, drew pilgrims to her bedside in a German convent when word spread of her gory visions of Jesus’s last hours of suffering.
Mr. Gibson has spoken of how a book recounting her visions inspired him in making his blockbuster movie, with its minutes-long shots of Jesus’s bloodied flesh. The church’s choice to honor Emmerick irritated some already unhappy about the Vatican’s enthusiasm for a film some called anti-Semitic because it might be seen as depicting Jews as the major force behind Christ’s death.
The Vatican has concluded that the veracity of her visions as contained in the 19th century book can’t be confirmed. Officials who worked with the Vatican in examining Emmerick’s life have said she was chosen for beatification because of her generosity with other poor and her extraordinary empathy with suffering. Emmerick suffered from inexplicable bleeding wounds similar to those Jesus’s suffered at crucifixion.
Pope John Paul praised Karl, also known as Charles, as “a friend of peace. In his eyes, the war was something abominable.” Karl took the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1916 and worked for peace, abdicating at the end of the war. Critics have said the Vatican had no business honoring a monarch whose troops used poison gas.
