The Bible says Mary Magdalene was a prostitute

On Easter Sunday, AD 591, Pope Gregory I preached a sermon that merged three separate women from the Gospels into one figure: Mary Magdalene (named directly in Luke 8:2 as a woman "from whom seven demons had gone out"), the unnamed "sinful woman" who anoints Jesus's feet with her tears in Luke 7:36-50, and Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus. Gregory read the "seven demons" detail as a coded reference to the seven deadly sins (leaning hardest on lust) and from that inference concluded Mary Magdalene was the same woman as Luke's unnamed sinner. The Greek word behind "sinner" in Luke 7, hamartōlos, is a general moral term; it doesn't specify prostitution at all.

That sermon set the Western church's understanding of Mary Magdalene for close to fourteen centuries. The Catholic Church formally separated the three women again in the 1969 revision of the Roman Missal, under Pope Paul VI, restoring each her own distinct feast day and identity. In the Gospels themselves, Mary Magdalene is named as a financial supporter of Jesus's ministry (Luke 8:2-3), present at the crucifixion when most of the male disciples had fled, and the first witness of the resurrection (John 20:1-18). The Gospel writers' actual emphasis lands on her faithfulness and priority as a witness, not on any past sin.