Veronica

About Veronica

Veronica is remembered in the sixth Station of the Cross as the woman who offers Jesus a cloth on his way to crucifixion. In the later devotional story, she reaches him through the crowd and wipes his wounded face; his image remains on the cloth. The Vatican's meditation explicitly notes that Veronica is not named in the Gospels.

The traditions surrounding her are not a single continuous biography. Dario Busolini's account for the Vatican's pilgrimage journal describes another legend in which a cloth bearing Christ's image is taken to the sick emperor Tiberius. He also reports the later identification of Veronica with the unnamed woman healed of bleeding. That identification belongs to the history of the tradition, not to an established identity supplied by the Gospels.

Her reception has a visible place in St Peter's Basilica. Francesco Mochi's statue presents Veronica holding her cloth beneath one of the great dome's supporting piers. The gallery above it is associated with the display of the relic venerated as the Holy Face. These are features of later worship and art, not surviving documentation of her lifetime.

Modern Stations meditations draw practical meaning from her gesture. The Vatican's 2012 text associates the offered cloth with assistance to suffering people, including patients, prisoners and immigrants. Veronica's place in devotion centers on this small act of attention amid public suffering.

Prayers for Veronica