Poland gives thanks to God for the gift of Sr. Faustina

Foreign Communication of the Polish Episcopate

The 90th anniversary of the first apparition of Jesus to Sister Faustyna was celebrated with a solemn liturgical celebration presided over by Msgr. Jan Romeo Pawłowski, Secretary of the Secretariat of State for Relations with the Pontifical Representations.

“Today, after 90 years, the prayer ‘Jesus I trust in you!’ is translated into hundreds of languages, and is repeated millions of times. We can dare to say that this prayer completes the ‘Our Father’ prayer, also established by Jesus himself to teach his disciples how to turn to the Father, while the one taught to Sr. Faustyna tells us how to turn to the Merciful Son” – declared Mons Pawłowski during the celebration.

Pope Francis reminded us that we must all be apostles of Divine Mercy. Before leaving to come here, I notified the Holy Father who told me: 'Pray for me and make people pray for me. Tell them that I deeply believe in divine mercy' - confided the prelate.

The President of the Polish Republic, Andrzej Duda, unable to be present in person at the Eucharistic celebration, sent a letter in which we read “The message they left (Pope John Paul II and Sister Faustina) has a universal dimension, reaching the hearts of people of good will, regardless of their religion and worldview. And I am convinced that, especially in modern times, humanity needs the solidarity and hope that sound so strongly in the writings of both of our saints.

Sr. Faustyna (1905-1938) was called by Jesus to a special mission: that of proclaiming His Divine Mercy to the world, of spreading the image of Jesus as it appeared to her and with the words “Jesus I trust in you!”, establish the feast of Divine Mercy on the first Sunday after Easter and the recitation of the chaplet of Divine Mercy.

On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the first apparition of Jesus to Sister Faustyna, Pope Francis expressed his closeness with a letter addressed to the Bishop of Płock, in whose diocese is located one of the monasteries in which Sr. Faustyna lived, and spoke about it during the Angelus on Sunday February 21. In the letter, the Holy Father recalled the words of Jesus written in the “Diary” by the Saint: “Humanity will not know peace until it turns to the source of my mercy”.

So I encourage you, let's turn to this Source. We ask Christ for the gift of mercy. Let it envelop and penetrate us. Let us have the courage to return to Jesus to encounter his love and mercy in the sacraments. We feel his closeness, his tenderness, and then we too will be more capable of mercy, patience, forgiveness and love - the Pope continued.

Pope Francis had gone to pray at the Saint’s tomb in 2016 on the occasion of the World Youth Day which was held in Krakow.

St. John Paul II deserves the credit for having made the Divine Mercy known to the world. He was a great devotee of Divine Mercy and from an early age he often went to the chapel of the convent of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in Krakow-Łagiewniki, where the image of Merciful Jesus was venerated.

With the appointment of Karol Wojtyła as Archbishop of Krakow, the cult of Divine Mercy spread and, in 1965 the Archbishop promoted the diocesan phase of the process of beatification of Sr. Faustyna which ended positively in 1967. The trial was then transferred to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in 1968.

In 1978 Karol Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II and proclaimed God’s Mercy as one of the essential elements for human salvation. In Łagiewniki the Holy Father entrusted himself, the Church and the whole world to the mercy of God.

In 1980, John Paul II published the encyclical “Dives in misericordia” on the Mercy of God. “It reminds us that God’s willingness to receive prodigal sons is inexhaustible and can only be limited by human obstinacy and lack of penance”.

John Paul II beatified Sister Faustyna in 1993 and canonized her in 2000, the year of the Great Jubilee. In the same year 2000 the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments instituted the Feast of Divine Mercy, binding in the whole universal Church on the first Sunday after Easter.

On August 17, 2002, John Paul II entrusted the world to Divine Mercy.

John Paul II died after the first Vespers of Divine Mercy Sunday in 2005.

One of the fruits of the world’s consecration to Divine Mercy in Krakow was the decision to build a Shrine of Divine Mercy in Vilnius, the city where Sister Faustina had most of her apparitions.

The mission of Sister Faustyna is described in the “Diary”, written by the desire of Jesus and on the advice of her spiritual fathers, in which she faithfully noted all what Jesus revealed to her. She died consumed by tuberculosis at the age of 33. The fame of the sanctity of his life grew together with the spread of the cult of Divine Mercy in the wake of the graces obtained through her intercession. The relics of Sister Faustina are buried in the sanctuary of divine mercy in Krakow.

Each year – before the outbreak of the pandemic – about 2.5 million pilgrims from Poland and all continents arrived at the Shrine of Divine Mercy in Kraków Łagiewniki. During the 2016 World Youth Day in Krakow, about 1.5 million young pilgrims from 182 countries around the world visited the Shrine.

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