Saint Veronica Giuliani (1660-1727)
Saint Veronica Giuliani was a mystic Capuchin nun who kept a diary each night after all her work was done for sixty-seven years that described very dramatic and intense experiences with Jesus. In all she wrote over 22 thousand journal pages.
Much of her writing was done at night over the course of sixty-four years. St. Veronica wrote about her amazing mystical experiences each night in her cell after all her work in the monastery was done.
She began her writings under obedience to her confessor, Fr. Gerolamo Bastianelli. These writings revealed many spiritual experiences about this victim soul. St. Veronica Guiliani was dedicated to a life of suffering and penances for sinners in the Catholic Church who had turned away from their baptismal vows, as well as for heretics, and pagans.
Having experienced a vision of hell and the judgement of Christ, Veronica was dedicated to doing all she could to give grace to those most in need of conversion.
Early Years of St. Veronica Giuliani's Life
St. Veronica Giuliani was born in Mercatello sul Metauro on December 27, 1660. She was baptized the next day and given the name Ursula by her parents. Her family was wealthy and she was the youngest child.
Ursula knew that Jesus was present in the Blessed Sacrament from the age of two. She had many sacred paintings in her home and she loved to pick flowers and place them before these images. When she was a young child she had many encounters with the child Jesus. She constantly heard inner voices. She wrote in her diary about a special painting of the Madonna with the infant Jesus. She often asked the Virgin Mother to let her hold the infant Jesus, and one time the images in the painting came alive for her and she was given the infant Jesus to hold. As a young child she had a deep love for the poor. One day a beggar came to her door asking for shoes. The child Ursula had a pair of shoes that she really loved. She took off her shoes and gave them to the beggar. She wanted very badly from a very young age to experience the cross to help save souls. She was the seventh and last child born into a middle-class family. Her parents were Francesco and Benedetta Mancini Giuliani. From early childhood, Ursula had a deep desire to do penances, to suffer with Jesus.
Ursula learned the faith from her mother who was deeply religious. Just before the age of 40, and while her children were still in her care, Ursula’s mother passed away. Before her death, her mother took a crucifix and assigned a wound to each of her five daughters. She gave Ursula the wound in the Sacred Side of Jesus, which became a prophetic gift. On her deathbed, Ursula’s mother entrusted this cross to young Ursula.
When Ursula was about 9 years old the family moved to Piacenza as her father took a position for the Duke of Parma for a period of three years. On February 2, when she was 10 years old, Ursula had her first holy Communion. She described her first experience with receiving the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus in the Eucharist as a ‘fire blazing in her heart’ and after this moment she had a burning desire to become a nun. This desire never left her. She wrote how she felt Jesus truly entering into her body in holy Communion. She was overwhelmed by His presence. She wanted to experience the cross so much that she begged Jesus to wound her with His love. As she grew she longed to become a nun. Her father had already allowed his other four daughters to enter the monastery, however, and he was opposed to allowing his youngest daughter, Ursula, as well.
Her father wanted her to marry and to stay with him. She was a very beautiful and charismatic young woman with blonde hair and blue eyes, and she had many suitors interested in having her for marriage. Her family would take her to lavish parties with handsome suitors to get her to change her mind, but she refused. She wanted to live an extreme life as close to Jesus as possible. Her father finally gave in to her because she was so determined to be a nun. Ursula had many interior locutions, speaking frequently with the Lord during this time. She deeply loved the Lord and promised to go to war against the forces of evil for His sake, forsaking all to live in His Divine Will and vowing to make herself a victim soul for the most hardened sinners. She wanted to make her life an oblation for the Lord, to identify with His suffering love and to be ‘crucified’ herself to become an image of Christ through her life.
Life as a Capuchin Nun
At the age of seventeen, Ursula became a Poor Clare of the Capuchins and was given the name of Veronica by the bishop. It is a name that means ‘true image’, and he felt she would be a great saint one day. She surrendered her life completely and radically to God. For the first couple of years as a novice she suffered from many temptations and spiritual dryness.
Her vocation seemed like a prison to her as she slowly conquered her ego and surrendered more fully to God. She longed to hear Him, but she did not. She was living in conflict between body and soul, fighting against the comforts she desired in the body and the longing of her soul to suffer for Christ. She prayed and prayed and prayed. She even went to confession up to four times a day. She was desperate to grow in holiness so that she could be united with Jesus.
During these first few years she persevered in the community prayer habits, which were very structured. The spontaneous prayer of her childhood was lost in this new regiment of prayer. She had many temptations from the evil one to stop in her progress to grow in virtue, but she persisted in her prayers, living a sacramental life, attending confession, and receiving the Eucharist.
Mystical Experiences of St. Veronica Giuliani
St. Veronica had a deep desire to live for Christ and become like the saints her mother had taught her about as a child. She wanted to truly imitate Christ.
She was asked by the Lord to fast and pray for souls, subsisting only on bread and water, and she did this diligently for 5 years. When her superiors felt this was too harsh and forced her to eat, she supernaturally threw up any food that was not bread. When they decided to allow her to return to only bread and water the stomach upsets miraculously ceased. She was given a great grace to live out the fruit of self-control. She was so deeply in love with Jesus that she desired to suffer with Him for love of souls.
St. Veronica understood the great mystery of suffering for the sake of souls, and how this form of love is the most perfect form of love, self-sacrificial. Jesus, who was sinless, transformed pain to grace and to mercy. He did this for the love of the Father, who is so much offended by sin, and for men, so that we may be reconciled to Him. His atonement for our sins was full of love and pain.
Our Lord told St. Veronica: “Man, who was created by Love and for ‘Love’ has offended ‘Love’ with the pride of the soul and the rebellion of the flesh; I bound the wound related to the ‘creator’s love’ and healed it through My extreme suffering. Who wants to complete in himself what was missing from My redeeming sufferings? Who wants to heal My wounds, I the ‘redeeming love’? Do you love Me?”
St. Veronica saw God offended in so many ways. She longed to offer herself as a victim soul for the salvation of all men. She replied: “I will be your comforting and redeeming Veronica. I give my blood instead of Yours. With You and same as You. I want to compensate for the ‘creator’s love’, and mostly I want all the swords that pierced the heart of Mary, the redemption partner. I want them all to pierce my heart.”
Jesus answered, “I chose you as a mediator, a mediator between Me and the sinners. You must commit yourself and all your efforts in order to save souls. Be always ready to give your life and your blood for My glory and for the salvation of souls.”
Jesus graced St. Veronica with many mystical experiences, including appearing before her 20 times as a bruised and bloodied Savior. She experienced the pains of the wound to His Sacred Side hundreds of times.
St. Veronica Giuliani tells us in her diary that Jesus took her in a vision to Hell. She said there were damned souls there who had so many demons upon them that they could not be counted. She described Hell as a horrible place and it gave her a deep longing to her increase her penances. She also had visions of souls about to fall into sin and so she performed many penances in order to offer them graces to convert their hearts. Jesus would also let her know about specific sinners He wanted her to pray for. She would get up immediately and kneel before the crucifix to pray for these souls. She understood that praying for sinners was very pleasing to the Lord.
One day, St. Veronica had a vision of Jesus bearing His Cross, and she began to feel acute pain over her heart. Then in 1693, in another vision, she was offered the chalice of Christ’s suffering. She accepted it, and after that her body carried the wounds of Christ. She had the imprint of the crown of thorns on her head, and then on Good Friday, April 5, 1697, she received the five holy wounds on her body. In this mystical experience she was kneeling before Jesus on the cross when she found herself being held from behind by an angel. As she was held, the Virgin Mary requested that her daughter Veronica be granted the grace of the stigmata. Rays of light sprang from the Lord’s five holy wounds and like nails and a spear, they pierced Veronica’s hands, feet, and side.
St. Veronica Giuliani’s wounds are called a stigmata. A stigmata is a mark on the saint’s body that is like one of the wounds that Jesus suffered during his crucifixion. It is a sign of their holiness and their willingness to suffer for souls the way that Jesus did. After receiving the stigmata, this began a new phase in St. Veronica’s spiritual life, one of deeper maturity. She became a saint of the Sacred Heart and went on experiencing many penances and sufferings in order to conquer self-will. At this time she suffered an inquisition and had to obey superiors who took away her faculties temporarily. She was ordered by her bishop to write a diary of her experiences and these works are vast, much of which has not been published yet. She never wanted to write about her experiences, but did so only out of obedience.
St. Veronica had many visions of purgatory and felt she needed to atone for the many sins and offenses against God. In her writings she laments about the terrible cost of sin and the horrible consequences that souls suffer after this life is over. We must have guilt for our sins, confess them, and atone for them. The Lord showed St. Veronica how much the souls in purgatory long for God and to purify themselves so that they can reunite with Him, but nothing impure can get close to His holiness.
St. Veronica writes, “The pains of purgatory are so terrible that no human intelligence can understand them. We’d die from pain and live again to suffer, if the soul had the chance to return to earth it would have faced all martyrdoms and torments to avoid Purgatory. Souls become embedded in fire. There is no rest. The moment a torment ends, another harsher one starts. What are the martyr’s torments if compared to those of Purgatory? Nothing. Sufferings of the flesh can’t be compared with the pains of the soul, each minute is an eternity.”
St. Veronica discovered that every soul can discover the presence of God the midst of their daily duties as well as during quite time in prayer. She followed this rule in her later years. She also taught this to her sisters when she was elected abbess of the convent, a job she held for 14 years until her death.
In the summer of 1727 St. Veronica Giuliani fell ill and for thirty-three days she suffered. On July 9, 1727, she died a happy death. Veronica was beatified on 17 June 1804 and canonized on 26 May 1839.
Learn more about St. Veronica Giuliani here.
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