Mary (biblical)

In the New Testament, the mother of Jesus through divine intervention (see Annunciation and Virgin Birth), wife of Joseph. The Roman Catholic Church maintains belief in her Immaculate Conception (birth without original sin) and bodily assumption into heaven, and venerates her as a mediator. The feast day of the Assumption is 15 August.

Traditionally her parents were elderly and named Joachim and Anna. Mary married Joseph and accompanied him to Bethlehem. Roman Catholic doctrine assumes that the brothers of Jesus were Joseph's sons by an earlier marriage, and that she remained a virgin. Pope Paul VI proclaimed her ‘Mother of the Church’ in 1964.