Emily Harnett

Mar 28, 2025 | harpers.org | Emily Harnett

It is roughly three o’clock in the afternoon in Assisi, and the chapel of St. Mary Maggiore is thronged with pilgrims. I hover above them, watching via a camera perched discreetly on the ceiling. The camera points down at a white casket. On the side of the casket is a window, through which I can see the body of a teenage boy: his jeans, his Nikes, his navy track jacket. The pilgrims proceed single file past the boy, who has been dead now for many years.

Mar 28, 2025 | harpers.org | Emily Harnett

It is roughly three o’clock in the afternoon in Assisi, and the chapel of St. Mary Maggiore is thronged with pilgrims. I hover above them, watching via a camera perched discreetly on the ceiling. The camera points down at a white casket. On the side of the casket is a window, through which I can see the body of a teenage boy: his jeans, his Nikes, his navy track jacket. The pilgrims proceed single file past the boy, who has been dead now for many years.

Apr 26, 2024 | harpers.org | Emily Harnett

Like many, I had assumed that her name, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, was an alias or affectation. Given what I knew of her—of the strange books she wrote, of the strange church she led—it seemed a little on the nose. But in fact it was her actual married name: her second husband, Mark, came from a long line of Prophets, and Elizabeth—his soulmate, his twin flame—remained one long after his death. In a way, her first name belonged to him, too.