St. Juliana of Liège

St. Juliana of Liège was born about 1192 at Retinnes near Liège, in present-day Belgium, and was orphaned young and raised by the Augustinian canonesses who cared for a leper hospital at Mont-Cornillon, whose community she later entered and, in time, led as prioress. A woman of deep learning and devotion, she had from her youth a special love for the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist.

From about the age of sixteen she began to receive a recurring vision of the full moon with a dark band across it, which she came at length to understand as signifying the Church's want of a special feast in honor of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. She worked quietly and long to promote this devotion, winning the support of learned churchmen, and though she suffered opposition and even exile from her convent, her cause bore fruit: a feast of Corpus Christi was first celebrated in the diocese of Liège, and not long after her death it was extended by Pope Urban IV to the whole Church. She died in exile at Fosses in 1258, and is venerated as a saint, her memory kept on 5 April.