I remember that during the war, when I was working at the “Solvay” factory, a place that is connected with Łagiewniki, I often went to the grave of Sister Faustina, when she had not yet been proclaimed blessed. It was all bizarre, unpredictable; when you considered that she was a simple girl. Could I have imagined then that I would be able to beatify her and then canonize her? She entered a convent in Warsaw. It was she, a few years before the war, who had this great vision of merciful Jesus, who called her to become an apostle of the veneration of God’s mercy, which was then to spread so widely in the Church. Sister Faustina died in 1938. Hence, from Krakow, the cult of Divine Mercy entered into a great sequence of events with world dimensions. When I became Archbishop, I commissioned Rev. Prof. Ignacy Różycki to study her writings. At first he didn’t want to. Then he studied in-depth accessible documents. And, finally he said: “She’s a great mystic.”
John Paul II. “Get up, let’s go!”
St. Stanislaus BM Publishing House. Cracow 2004.
