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Veronica was born on
December 27, 1660 of devout parents at Mercatelo in Italy. Her mother died when
Veronica was only four years old. In her last moments she assigned each
of her five children to one of the five wounds of Christ and bade them
take refuge there whenever they were troubled. Veronica was the
youngest. She was assigned to the wound in the side of our Lord, and
from that time on her heart became more tempered. Co-operating with the
grace of God, her soul gradually went through a refining process by
which she became an object of admiration in later years.
At
the age of seventeen, the young woman entered the monastery of the
Capuchin Poor Clares nuns at Cittá di Castello in Umbria,
where the primitive rule of St. Clare was observed.
When Veronica had served seventeen years in
various offices in her community, she was entrusted with the guidance
of the novices. She directed them in the truths of the Faith and the
rule of the order as their safest guides on the way of perfection.
Meanwhile, extraordinary things were beginning to happen to her. On
Good Friday she received the Stigmata, and later the crown of Thorns
was impressed on her head amid untold sufferings.
Having
filled the office of novice mistress during a space of twenty-two
years, Veronica was unanimously elected abbess. Purified more and more
by many sufferings, to which she added many austere mortifications, she
went to her eternal reward on July 9, 1727, after spending fifty years
in the monastery. Because of her heroic virtues and the many miracles
that were continually being worked at her tomb. She was canonized by
Pope Gregory XVI in 1839. Her Feast Day is July 10.
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