Saint Veronica Giuliani

Saint Veronica Giuliani was a Capuchin Poor Clare in Città di Castello in Umbria, a novice mistress, and for the last eleven years of her life the abbess of her monastery. The Roman Martyrology describes her as an abbess endowed with spiritual charisms, who shared in the Passion of Christ in soul and body. The Church commemorates her on July 9.

She was born on December 27, 1660, in Mercatello sul Metauro, the youngest of the seven daughters of Francesco Giuliani and Benedetta Mancini. At baptism she was given the name Ursula. When she was seven her mother died, and her father moved to Piacenza, where he oversaw the customs of the Duchy of Parma. There the desire to give her life to Christ grew in her. Three of her sisters also embraced the religious life.

In 1677 she entered the strict enclosure of the monastery of the Capuchin Poor Clares in Città di Castello and remained there until her death. She received the name Veronica, which means “true image,” and a year later she made her solemn profession. Benedict XVI lists the mystical experiences connected with the Passion of Jesus that marked her life: the crowning with thorns, the mystical marriage, the wound in the heart and the stigmata. According to her biographers, she bore the stigmata from 1697.

Her experiences were put to a severe test. The Holy Office examined them, for a time she was removed from offices in the monastery, and the Martyrology records that for fifty days she was kept in custody. She accepted this with the patience and obedience that the Martyrology holds up as an example.

From 1693 she kept a Diary, which the Oratorian Girolamo Bastianelli, in agreement with the bishop, obliged her to write. It runs to about twenty-two thousand handwritten pages covering thirty-four years of cloistered life. She understood her vocation as standing between sinners and Christ Crucified: she prayed and offered her sufferings for the Church, the Pope, priests, sinners and the souls in purgatory.

In 1716, at the age of 56, she became abbess and held that office until her death. She died on July 9, 1727, after thirty-three days of painful agony, having lived fifty years in the monastery. Her last words were: “I have found Love, Love has let himself be seen!”

Pius VII beatified her in 1804, and Gregory XVI canonized her on May 26, 1839. Benedict XVI devoted a catechesis to her on December 15, 2010, as the 350th anniversary of her birth drew near.