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 Veronica wiping away the spit and mud from the face of Jesus with her veil on the way to Calvary. She said that sacrilegious and blasphemous acts today are adding to the spit and mud that Veronica wiped away that day. According to Marie of St Peter, in her visions, Jesus told her that he desired devotion to His Holy Face in reparation for sacrilege and blasphemy. Acts of Reparation to Jesus Christ are thus compared to Veronica wiping the face of Jesus. The Devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus was eventually approved by Pope Leo XIII in 1885. Veronica is commemorated on 12 July. Official patronage Saint Veronica is the patron of the French mulquiniers whose representations they celebrated biannually (summer and winter) as in many pious Christian countries. She is also the patron saint of photographers, and laundry workers. In popular culture In Volume 5 of her work, The Poem of the Man-God, Italian writer and alleged mystic Maria Valtorta depicts Veronica as Nike, who offered the linen cloth to Christ. It is also stated earlier in the same volume that "The one we call Veronica and whom Jesus called Nike..." suggesting that Nike has been mistakenly referred to as Veronica throughout history. Selma Lagerlöf in Christ Legends expands the legend by making Veronica a former servant of the Roman emperor Tiberius, named Faustina, who travels to Jerusalem in search of the Prophet of Nazareth, after learning that he once cured a young woman of leprosy. She travels on behalf of Tiberius, now himself stricken, hoping to bring him a cure and redemption from his evil ways. Faustina arrives on the day of the Crucifixion, and the rest is legend. Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ (2004) included an episode of Veronica wiping Jesus's face, although she is not referred to by name in the film (she is credited in the film as Seraphia). Anne Catherine Emmerich, one of the inspirational sources to the cited movie, depicts a long description of the Veronica episode and she identifies the true name of Veronica also as Seraphia. The most common pass with the cape in bullfighting is called a verónica, as the torero holds