Sanctuary of Divine Mercy

Image: Wikimedia Commons

In the convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy at Łagiewniki lived a young nun with a third-grade education to whom, she wrote, Jesus entrusted a message for the whole world: that His mercy is greater than any sin, and that souls should approach Him with the simple words Jesus, I trust in You. Sister Faustina Kowalska filled her Diary with these conversations, and died here on October 5, 1938, at thirty-three, today's feast. Her tomb and relics rest in the old convent chapel beneath the famous image of the Merciful Jesus, two rays streaming from His heart, before which pilgrims pray the Chaplet at three o'clock, the hour of mercy. In 1968 the archbishop of Krakow, Karol Wojtyła, made the chapel a shrine; as John Paul II he canonized Faustina in 2000, the first saint of the new millennium, and in 2002 he consecrated the great ark-shaped basilica built beside the convent, entrusting the whole world to Divine Mercy in what he called the capital of that devotion. Millions now come each year to the quiet room where a hidden nun heard mercy speak.