She is not in Scripture, but St. Veronica Captures the ‘True Image’ of Christ’s Teachings

July 2025 revealed significant information about family caregivers that applies to millions of people. The data has gone largely unnoticed in favor of more scintillating political headlines of the summer. AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving released the 140-page,Caregiving in the US, a report which discloses the startling revelation that nearly 25 percent of Americans are long-term caregivers of a family member. That percentage translates to 63 million caregivers, an increase of 45 percent in only 10 years.¹

The non-quantifiers: loneliness, isolation, and lack of training haven’t changed in the last decade. The struggle to continue working for financial stability versus giving the appropriate care the loved one needs remains an issue, although government programs have been enacted this year to pay some caregivers. The majority of family caregivers are women, who are among the 59 million providing for patients that the report refers to as having a “complex medical condition or disability.” ¹

The role of faith and prayer are absent from the report and, if it were included, might provide a bright spot in an otherwise bleak portrait. The Catholic Church’s contributions to hospitals and hospice have been documented over the generations, but strangely, there is no patron saint for this kind of family caregiving. St. John typically pops up first in a search for bringing the Blessed Mother into his home following the Crucifixion. St. Vincent DePaul for his nurturing sometimes is mentioned. St. Elizabeth of Hungary who fed the poor is an option for people looking for a woman caregiver. There are others too, all of whom provided mighty works of corporal mercy, but don’t quite reflect the model of family caregivers that could provide the quiet, strong support the faithful seek.

Here is one to consider: St. Veronica. 

What did Veronica do?

Veronica is known for handing a cloth to Jesus Christ on the Via Dolorosa to wipe his face. He imprinted his face, and this cloth that is still believed to exist is stored in Rome at the Vatican. That is Veronica’s action at the most basic level.

But what exactly did she do and what does it have to do with modern-day family caregivers?

Veronica was available in the moment when Jesus would pass by, willing to change her whole life. She had paid attention to the events leading up to Jesus’s way to the cross and anticipated, regardless of the difficulties it would bring to her personally, the moment when she would be needed. She broke through the Centurion guards to reach Jesus. Consider that risk. Without looking and with just an elbow, one of the guards could have knocked her to the ground, rendering her unconscious. Any one of them could have applied more force, just for the fun of it. We know, based on what they did to Jesus, that inflicting pain was sport to them. In any way, they could have prevented her from reaching Him. Her focus, faith, and compassion, just to offer a moment of comfort and care to a man who was on his way to death, were stronger than a Centurion guard. It seems like so much to do for something so little, and in the end, wouldn’t change the outcome.

Family caregivers exhibit these characteristics.

True, in 2025 the landscape is much different, but caregivers still have their own kind of Centurion guards. Anyone dealing with insurance companies, medical establishment, or critical and absent family members faces their own Centurion guards. There is also the inner Centurion guard to confront. Uprooting your life to take care of someone isn’t easy to do, even knowing it’s the right thing and you’ll end up doing it. These foes want to tear the caregiver down, but faith, focus, and compassion prove stronger. Caregiving can last for weeks, months, or years. Some days can feel like years, but in many cases the whole period turns out to be little more than a blink compared with two people’s lifetimes. It’s a big job too, but it’s those ordinary happenings — sharing a memory while buttoning a pajama top or finding a silly moment during a bath— that prove to have the same impact as offering and receiving a face cloth. 

Who was Veronica?

Maybe the most surprising facet of the Veronica story is that, unlike Simon of Cyrene and the weeping women, Veronica is not mentioned in the Bible. She is a part of Catholic tradition. We know her from the sixth of the 14 traditional Stations of the Cross, a Catholic devotion that has been in existence for centuries. Some traditions claim her as the unnamed woman who hemorrhaged for 12 years (Matthew 9:20-22; Mark 5:25-34; Luke 8:43-48). We also know her through Catholic mystics. The 14th Century reclusive English nun, Julian of Norwich, refers to her by name in the second and eighth visions in The Revelation of Divine Love in Sixteen Showings but does not speak specifically about her.

No one, however, offers a caregiver profile of Veronica better than Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerich, beatified by Pope St. John Paul II in 2004. She describes Veronica in enthralling detail in the visions recounted in The Complete Vision of Anne Catherine Emmerich.² In his podcast, The Life of Jesus Christ in a Year, taken from the four-volume set of the same title, Fr. Edward Looney reads from the book and offers his insights that mirror the same captivating minutiae. ³ In Complete Visions, she sets the scene in a tense and crowded Jerusalem streetscape when, emerging from a flight of steps, a “tall elegant woman holding a little girl by the hand” hurries toward the procession. ² Her name is Seraphia, and she is the wife of a Temple council member named Sirach. The girl, about nine or ten, is her adopted daughter, and she is hiding a mug of spiced wine under her cloak to offer to the Lord. The two encountered resistance when trying to break through frontline guards.

“Transported with love and compassion, with the child holding fast to her dress, she pressed through the mob running at the side of the procession, in through the soldiers and executioners, stepped before Jesus, fell on her knees, and held up to Him the outspread end of the linen kerchief …” ²

The kerchief, sometimes called a cloth, sometimes the veil of Veronica, is described as “… a strip of fine wool about three times as long as wide. It was usually worn around the neck, and sometimes a second was thrown over the shoulder. It was customary upon meeting one in sorrow, in tears, in misery, in sickness, or in fatigue, to present it to wipe the face. It was a sign of mourning and sympathy.” ²

If that is not a sign of a caregiver, then what is?

Additionally, Bl. Anne Catherine goes on to say that Seraphia, who was older than the Blessed Mother, is a relative of Jesus through John the Baptist’s father, and that she knew Mary since the Queen of Heaven had been a little girl. Seraphia knew Jesus was the Messiah, having also been related to Simeon who helped to raise her, and that she made sure Jesus, as a 12-year old, was fed during the harried time Mary and Joseph were searching for Him only to find the boy preaching in His Father’s house. She literally was a family caregiver of various methods over the lifetime of Jesus Christ.

Our Lord’s sense of irony won’t be lost on many caregivers who feel unseen and unheard: the individual who cares for Him and preserves His image is absent in Scripture. 

Bl. Anne Catherine says so much about this courageous woman in only two pages of Complete Visions and also in The Life of Christ, including how she came to be known as “Veronica.” It means “true image.”² The cloth that the Vatican protects is often referred to as “The Veronica.” Like many who loved the Lord, she was later persecuted, arrested, and died a martyr from starvation. Her feast day is in July (12th), the same month this latest report on caregivers was released. She is heralded rightly as the patron saint of photographers and of laundresses. If we are to believe Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerich, however, she deserves as well to be regarded as patron of one of the most precious roles in modern society: the family caregiver.

Saint Veronica, pray for all caregivers!

1. AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving, Caregiving in the US Research Report (Location unlisted July 2025), 7.

2. Emmerich, Anne Catherine and Catholic Book Club Editors, The Complete Visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich, Catholic Book Club. (Location unlisted 2014), 676.

3.  Looney, Edward. “Day 274: Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus. The Mystical City of God in a Year.” April 11, 2022. Audio Podcast, 35 min. 5 sec. https://open.spotify.com/episode/4JYwyULbJvqYggsXB3A0nU?si=Dm0ED69mSTS7jJJ6NuSnBQ

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Copyright 2025 by Mary McWilliams

Edited by Rietta Parker