Saint Veronica Giuliani

Orsola Giuliani was born in Mercatello sul Metauro on December 27, 1660, the youngest of seven daughters. Her mother died when she was seven. At seventeen she entered the Capuchin Poor Clares of Città di Castello, where she stayed for fifty years, until her death. The bishop changed her name to Veronica, in memory of the Passion. Hers is one of the best-documented mystical lives there is, and for a specific reason: her confessor ordered her to write everything down, and she obeyed for thirty-four years. The result is a diary of more than twenty-two thousand pages, in a language all her own, ungrammatical and tremendously powerful. In 1694 she became novice mistress. On Good Friday of 1697, after three years of fasting on bread and water, the stigmata appeared. The Church didn’t believe her: she was put through a very harsh investigation, kept in isolation, deprived of her vote and of Communion, examined by doctors who burned her hands to see whether the wounds would close. It went on for years. She accepted everything without protest, and kept on writing. In the end she was cleared, and in 1716 her sisters elected her abbess. She held the office for eleven years, and proved an excellent administrator: she brought water to the monastery, enlarged the building, kept the accounts. She died in Città di Castello on July 9, 1727. Gregory XVI proclaimed her a saint in 1839. If your name is Veronica, today is your name day.