Sanctuary of Kalwaria Zebrzydowska

Image: Wikimedia Commons

In the hills south of Kraków, the voivode Mikołaj Zebrzydowski founded a church in 1602 and entrusted it to the Bernardine friars, then built across the slopes a Jerusalem in miniature: forty-two chapels along five kilometres of Calvary paths, the largest calvary in Europe. Its Baroque Basilica of Our Lady of the Angels shelters the miraculous image of Our Lady of Kalwaria, venerated since 1641, and every Holy Week the Passion is played out along the paths before thousands of pilgrims. This was the sanctuary Karol Wojtyła loved from boyhood in nearby Wadowice, returning as bishop and as Pope John Paul II, who raised it to a basilica in 1979; UNESCO listed the whole prayerful landscape in 1999. On August 26, Poland's great feast of Our Lady of Częstochowa, all her Polish shrines rejoice together.