Faustina Kowalska

Life events

1. Born — 1905

   Helena Kowalska was born on 25 August 1905 in Głogowiec, Łęczyca County, northwest of Łódź, the third of ten children of Stanisław Kowalski and Marianna Kowalska. Her father was a carpenter and the family was poor.

2. Other — 1924

   At age 18, Kowalska attended a dance in a park in Łódź with her sister Natalia, where she reported a vision of a suffering Jesus. She then went to the Łódź Cathedral and departed by train to Warsaw the same night — without her parents' permission and knowing no one in the city — to seek entry to a convent.

3. Tonsured — 1926

   On 30 April 1926, after working as a housemaid to save the required deposits, Kowalska was clothed in the habit at the Warsaw convent of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy and received the religious name Maria Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament.

4. Wrote — 1931

   On the night of 22 February 1931, while at the convent in Płock, Kowalska recorded in her diary (Notebook I, Items 47–49) that Jesus appeared wearing a white garment with red and pale rays emanating from his heart, instructing her to commission an image with the inscription 'Jesus, I trust in You' and to establish a feast of mercy on the first Sunday after Easter.

5. Other — 1933

   On 1 May 1933, at Łagiewniki, Kowalska took her final perpetual vows as a sister of Our Lady of Mercy. Shortly afterward she was transferred to Vilnius, where she met Father Michael Sopoćko — newly appointed confessor to the nuns and a professor at Stefan Batory University — who became the first clergyman to support the Divine Mercy mission after requiring a full psychiatric evaluation of Kowalska in 1933.

6. Other — 1934

   By June 1934, the artist Eugene Kazimierowski — introduced to Kowalska by Sopoćko in January 1934 — completed the first Divine Mercy painting at Vilnius under the direction of both Kowalska and Sopoćko. This was the only Divine Mercy painting Kowalska personally supervised.

7. Wrote — 1935

   On 13 and 14 September 1935, while stationed in Vilnius, Kowalska recorded in her diary (Notebook I, Items 474–476) the prayers and structure of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, stating they were dictated to her by Jesus Christ. In November 1935 she also wrote the rules for a proposed contemplative congregation devoted to the Divine Mercy.

8. Died — 1938

   Kowalska died on 5 October 1938 in Kraków at age 33, after a prolonged illness speculated to be tuberculosis. She was buried on 7 October 1938; her remains now rest at the Basilica of Divine Mercy in Kraków.

Relationships

Documented claims

• Faustina Kowalska was born Helena Kowalska; she received the religious name Maria Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament upon clothing in the habit on 30 April 1926. (certain)
• Her handwritten diary, kept from 1925 until her death in 1938 and published as Diary: Divine Mercy in My Soul, runs to approximately 700 printed pages and is described as the only mystical text composed in Polish. (likely)
• In March 1959 the Holy Office prohibited circulation of images and writings promoting the Divine Mercy devotion in the forms proposed by Kowalska; the ban was reversed in April 1978 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith after newly available original documents were reviewed. (certain)
• In 1933, at the insistence of confessor Michael Sopoćko, Kowalska underwent a complete psychiatric evaluation by physician Helena Maciejewska and was declared of sound mind before Sopoćko agreed to support her spiritual mission. (likely)
• Kowalska was beatified on 18 April 1993 and canonized on 30 April 2000 by Pope John Paul II, who simultaneously proclaimed the Second Sunday of Easter as Divine Mercy Sunday for the universal Roman Catholic Church. (certain)