Tradition of Mary's house in Turkey stems from nun's vision

Published: 2006-11-29

EPHESUS, Turkey (CNS) -- Catholics, Orthodox and Muslims began making pilgrimages to the House of the Virgin Mary near Ephesus only after a bedridden, almost illiterate German nun had a vision of the house's location. In an account attributed to Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, who never left Germany, the house could be found high on a rocky hill above Ephesus, partially hidden in a grove of trees. Pope Benedict XVI briefly went into the tiny house Nov. 29 before celebrating an outdoor Mass in honor of Mary. Blessed Emmerich's description of her vision was published in "The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary" by the poet Clemens Brentano after the nun's death in 1824. While Brentano claimed to have acted as a secretary, simply writing down what Blessed Emmerich described, the Vatican said the style raised enough questions over authorship that it did not consider the book on Mary or two other Brentano accounts of Blessed Emmerich's visions in the process that led to her beatification in 2004. However, the book led a French priest to Turkey in 1881 in a search for the house.

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