11 Facts About Saint Veronica

Saint Veronica, known as Berenike, was a widow from Jerusalem who lived in the 1st century AD, according to extra-biblical Christian traditions.

Apocryphal texts relate how Veronica was moved with sympathy seeing Jesus carrying the cross to Calvary and gave him her veil so that he could wipe his forehead.

The story of Saint Veronica is celebrated in the sixth Station of the Cross in Anglican, Catholic, and Western Orthodox churches.

The name Saint Veronica is a Latinisation of this ancient Macedonian name.

When it is to be exhibited an opening is made in the roof of the church and a wooden chest or cradle is let down, in which are two clerics, and when they have descended, the chest or cradle is drawn up, and they, with the greatest reverence, take out the Saint Veronica and show it to the people, who make concourse there upon the appointed day.

Saint Veronica was mentioned in the reported visions of Jesus by Marie of St Peter, a Carmelite nun who lived in Tours, France, and started the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus.

In 1844, Sister Marie reported that in a vision, she saw Saint Veronica wiping away the spit and mud from the face of Jesus with her veil on the way to Calvary.

Saint Veronica said that sacrilegious and blasphemous acts today are adding to the spit and mud that Veronica wiped away that day.

Acts of Reparation to Jesus Christ are thus compared to Saint Veronica wiping the face of Jesus.

Saint Veronica is the patron of the French mulquiniers whose representations they celebrated semi-annually as in many pious Christian countries.

Saint Veronica is the patron saint of photographers, and laundry workers.