Saint Veronica Giuliani
My original oil painting of Saint Veronica Giuliani, oil on linen, 2025
“I belong completely to God; I want no other will than His: may He do to me according to His holy will. Regarding the rest, I seek nothing other than pure love, the glory of God, and the fulfillment of His will.”
Saint Veronica Giuliani, the late 17th-century Capuchin Poor Clare nun and abbess, mystic, and stigmatists, and was beatified by Pope Pius VII in 1804 and canonized by Pope Gregory XVI in 1839. Considering the extraordinary supernatural graces that she received and her extensive spiritual Diary, she is surprisingly little known today. Yet devotion to this remarkable saint is now on the rise according to God’s providence. I believe that she has been hidden until our time of present need. I had never heard of this Saint until I was asked by my friend to paint her image. I have been profoundly edified and challenged by Saint Veronica Giuliani as I began to pray with her for my client, and to ask for her intercession for my own sanctification and for the success of my painting. Now that my painting is, by God’s grace, complete, I want to share the gift of Saint Veronica’s friendship with you!
Relics of St. Veronica preserved in her monastery The Franciscan Capuchin Monastery in Citta-di-Castello showing (left) framed sketches made of St. Veronica of her heart marked with emblems of the Passion of Jesus; and wax death mask that preserves her actual features (detail on right),
First, let me share the resources that I found to learn about Saint Veronica’s life and her continued intercession in our time. Her spiritual Diary, written over thirty years under holy obedience, is tens of thousands of pages. Shockingly, the very first English translation of excepts of her Diary were just published in 2023. This Compendium was translated and published by Bret Thoman, OFC and is less than 200 pages. It is titled The Diary of St. Veronica Giuliani. A Compendium: “Tell Everyone Love has been found!’ The dust jacket reads:
Saint Veronica Giuliani (1660-1727) is one of the most extraordinary mystics in the history of Christianity. A Poor Clare nun, she was a stigmatic who offered her many mystical sufferings (including the stigmata) for others. After fifty years in a monastery, where she served as abbess and novice directress, she ended her life divinized. And yet, even though numerous popes have extolled her virtues, St. Veronica Giuliani is little known outside her native region and Capuchin Order. For over thirty years, St. Veronica Giuliani meticulously recorded her life story and extraordinary spiritual experiences. […] In her Diary, what is revealed is the beauty of the Gospel and a woman madly in love with God — ‘set on fire,’ in her words. Before she died, she told her sisters to tell everyone that ‘Love has been found.’
It is very much worth your time to read this selection of the writings of the Saint. Jesus Himself made two promises to Veronica about this diary: “The Lord himself made me understand I should write everything; because He wanted it thus; and that these writings would be of great benefit to many souls; and that he wanted it to be for the whole of Christianity.” And on another occasion Jesus told her: “I inform you that I want to give special graces to whomever will trouble himself with this work. And I want everything, everything revealed. These are My works, My gifts, they are My singular graces, and all shall be for My glory.”
However, for those of you who may be new to the phenomena of ‘victim souls’ - that is, souls especially called by God to unite themselves in a special way with His suffering for the salvation and sanctification of souls - I would strongly recommend reading Part Eight of the Diary first. This section of the Diary is about Saint Veronica’s devotion to the Eucharist and it communicates her profound love of God which is the inspiration of all of her suffering that is more fully elaborated in the earlier chapters of the Diary.
“God is love; love is the pasture of life; love is the life of the soul; [the soul] thinks of nothing else; it doesn’t want anything other than love — not for itself, but to give back to God His own love.”
Posters for the film in Italian and English
Another wonderfully informative resource is a dramatized documentary on the life of Saint Veronica Giuliani, titled “The Awakening of a Giant” which was produced in 2016, and is directed by John Ziberna and Valeria Baldan. The whole film is available on YouTube (linked above). The title of the film reflects Pope Pius IX description of Saint Veronica Giuliani as a “giant of saintliness.”
Pope Benedict said that in her witness, Veronica was true to her name, which means, “true image.”
"She became the true image of Christ on the Cross," he said in his General Audience on the 350-year anniversary of her birth.
A saint rises up in Lebanon!
The sanctuary of the new church of St. Veronica Giuliani at the the Monastery of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Ksaybe, Lebanon.
The second church in the world dedicated to St. Veronica Giuliani was consecrated in 2016 in Ksaibe, Lebanon. The rise of contemporary devotion in Lebanon to the 17th-century Italian saint began with Brother Emmanuel who learned about and fell in love with the saint when he came upon her writings in 1994. In 2008 he founded an association, the Friends of St. Veronica Giuliani, and, in 2015, a new religious order, the Little Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary located at the church of St. Veronica Giuliani in Lebanon. Currently, there are seven nuns and four brothers in the order. The story of Brother Emmanuel’s inspiration to dedication a new church to St. Veronica and to help spread devotion to her in Lebanon is truly miraculous and awe-inspiring. You can hear his first-hand testimony and learn more about how this came to be in this video.
“ We hope St. Veronica Giuliani will be the patron saint for [Lebanon] and that, through her intercession, the Lord will end the trials and tribulations of war, so that peace prevails in the world.”
My Journey with Saint Veronica Giuliani
Once I received the commission to paint Saint Veronica Giuliani, I began doing four things: 1) praying with her, 2) researching about her and reading her Diary, 3) looking up images and artwork of the saint, and 4) looking for a Poor Clare habit as a reference for my painting.
Since St. Veronica lived in Italy at the turn of the 16th to 17th centuries, I decided to paint her in the Baroque, Caravaggesque style consistent with her time and place. I had just finished my reproduction of Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus, and was excited to make an original oil painting in this style. There is a high degree of naturalism in this way of painting which is very incarnational. I felt that this was the appropriate approach to painting St. veronica not only because it was consistent with her historical period, but also because her spirituality was so intensely physical and her personality so dramatic… full of light and dark like a chiaroscuro painting. Therefore, I felt the need to have an excellent reference for every natural detail of the painting including a Poor Clare habit along with a beautiful crucifix and real crown of thorns!
I reached out to a religious sister who put me in touch with the Abbess of a local community of Poor Clares at the Monastery of the Immaculate Conception in Palos Park, IL. Amazingly, when the Mother Abbess learned about the project she most generously agreed to loan me a habit to use as a reference. Since a nun’s habit is a sacred garment, this was both surprising and a great privilege!
I made a little pilgrimage to the Monastery to meet the Abbess and to pick up the habit. I do not drive so I took public transportation all the way from Chicago to Palos Hills. During this pilgrimage on a chilly winter day I read St. Veronica’s Diary and prayed with her. She inspired me to make an act of total abandonment to God’s divine providence and to unite every little physical discomfort (there were many while on the city public transit system, and in the chilly periods of waiting outside for bus transfers) and every burden of sorrow in my heart. These little physical and spiritual offerings through St. Veronica’s intercession changed - converted - my heart in so significant a way that by the time I returned to the city to attend evening Mass it was bursting with joy and gratitude. My heart was filled with the joy of God’s perfect will and the friendship of His saints!
At the Monastery I was invited to join the sisters for midday prayer in the chapel. As is often the case with pilgrimages, the long and tiresome journey to arrive and to go home again afterwards helped to emphasize the time I spent in the chapel as ‘other’ - as a foretaste of heaven. Indeed, as heaven on earth. I was in the secret garden with my sisters, the brides of Christ, and I recognized God’s Real Presence in the tabernacle in that chapel as the living heart, the epicenter, of all time and creation and of my own life. Glory be to God!
Poor Clare nuns praying at the Monastery of the Immaculate Conception in Palos Park, IL.
A print illustrating the symbols of Jesus’ Passion that were mystically and physically inscribed on St. Veronica’s heart
A painting of St. Veronica
An engraving of St. Veronica
A Prayer with St. Veronica:
Father,
you made the virgin, Saint Veronica,
a wonderful embodiment of your Son’s Passion.
Through her example and prayer
may we become conformed to Christ
by humbly embracing the cross
and so rejoicing when he is revealed in glory,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.