Saint Juliana of Liège

Saint Juliana of Liège, also known as Juliana of Cornillon, was an Augustinian nun and prioress of the monastery of Mont-Cornillon near Liège, in present-day Belgium. The Church owes to her perseverance the solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Corpus Christi. The memorial of Saint Juliana falls on April 5.

She was born in the village of Retinne near Liège. The year of her birth is not known exactly: the sources give years from 1191 to 1193. At the age of five she was orphaned and, together with her sister Agnes, was entrusted to the care of the sisters of Mont-Cornillon, who ran a hospice for lepers. She was brought up by a sister named Sapientia. Juliana learned Latin well enough to read the works of the Fathers of the Church, especially Saint Augustine and Saint Bernard. In time she herself received the habit.

From her youth she lived with a deep reverence for the Eucharist. When she was sixteen, she received for the first time a vision that later returned during adoration: she saw the moon in its full splendor, crossed by a dark stripe. She understood that the moon stood for the life of the Church on earth, and the stripe for the absence of a feast on which the faithful could honor the Blessed Sacrament in a special way. For about twenty years she kept this revelation secret. During that time she became prioress.

Later she confided in two women equally devoted to the Eucharist: Blessed Eva, a recluse at the church of Saint Martin in Liège, and Isabella, who had joined her at Mont-Cornillon. They asked Canon John of Lausanne for help, and he put the matter before theologians, who answered favorably. The bishop of Liège, Robert of Thourotte, after some initial hesitation, accepted Juliana’s request and in 1246 instituted the new feast in his diocese. As John Paul II recalled, Juliana also composed an office for that day.

She had to bear the harsh opposition of part of the clergy and of the superior on whom her monastery depended. In 1248 she left Mont-Cornillon with a few companions, and for ten years she was a guest of monasteries of Cistercian nuns. Benedict XVI emphasized that she had no words of criticism for her opponents and went on zealously spreading Eucharistic worship. She lived her last years as a recluse at Fosses.

There she died on April 5, 1258. According to her biographer, the Blessed Sacrament was exposed in the cell where she lay, and she died gazing on Jesus present in the Eucharist. In accordance with her wish, she was buried in the Cistercian abbey of Villers.

The cause of the feast was taken up by Jacques Pantaléon of Troyes, who had come to know Juliana as archdeacon in Liège. When he became Pope Urban IV, by the bull Transiturus de hoc mundo of August 11, 1264, he instituted the solemnity of Corpus Christi for the whole Church, and he entrusted the composition of the liturgical texts to Saint Thomas Aquinas. Juliana had long been venerated as a saint, although no formal canonization ever took place. In 1869 Pope Pius IX confirmed her cult.