Veronica Giuliani (1660–1727) was born Orsola Giuliani in Mercatello sul Metauro and entered the Capuchin Poor Clares of Città di Castello at seventeen. She served the community as novice mistress for 34 years and as abbess for the final 11. From 1697, when she was 37, she bore the stigmata — the visible wounds of Christ on her hands, feet, and side — for the remaining 30 years of her life. Her superiors at first treated the phenomenon with extreme suspicion, isolating her and subjecting her to repeated medical examinations.
After her death on July 9, 1727, an autopsy was performed at the order of the Bishop of Città di Castello. The autopsy report — which survives in the diocesan archive — documents that the instruments of the Passion (the Cross, the lance, the crown of thorns, the column, the scourges, three nails) were found physically imprinted on the tissue of her heart, in the precise positions she had described in her diary years before her death. The bishop's commission of physicians and clergy verified the findings. The body remains preserved in the monastery chapel; the heart, in a separate reliquary, is annually exposed. Canonised by Gregory XVI in 1839.