Assumption of Mary

The Assumption of Mary is one of the four Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church. Pope Pius XII defined it on 1 November 1950 in his apostolic constitution as follows:

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The declaration was built upon the 1854 dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, which declared that Mary was conceived free from original sin, and both have their foundation in the concept of Mary as the Mother of God. It leaves open the question of whether Mary died or whether she was raised to eternal life without bodily death.

The equivalent belief (which is not held as dogma) in the Eastern Orthodox Church is the Dormition of the Mother of God or the "Falling Asleep of the Mother of God".

The word 'assumption' derives from the Latin word , meaning 'taking up'.

Mary's assumption highlights the Catholic belief in the resurrection of both body and flesh. Pope Pius expressed in his encyclical ''Munificentissimus Deus'' the hope that the belief in the bodily assumption of the virgin Mary into heaven "will make our belief in our own resurrection stronger and render it more effective". Provided by Wikipedia