South of Kraków, in the quiet district of Łagiewniki, a red-brick convent has been home for over a century to a community of sisters devoted to raising up women in distress. Nothing about this ordinary place suggested it would become one of the most visited shrines in the world. Yet it was here that a humble sister, Faustina Kowalska, who died at thirty-three in 1938, received and passed on a message that the twentieth century ended up hearing: God is mercy, and this mercy is the last recourse offered to a world torn apart by wars and ideologies.[1][2]
This article presents the Divine Mercy shrine as a spiritual phenomenon: the history of the Łagiewniki convent, the life and spirituality of Saint Faustina, the image of the Merciful Christ, the forms of the devotion (chaplet, Hour of Mercy, Divine Mercy Sunday), the great basilica consecrated by John Paul II in 2002 and the "act of entrustment of the world" that made it the "capital of Mercy". The life of Saint Faustina is treated here insofar as it sheds light on the shrine; the detail of her spiritual doctrine and her writings belongs to a treatment of its own.[3]
To understand Łagiewniki, it must be set alongside Częstochowa: there, the monastery of Jasna Góra is the shrine of the Polish nation and of its Queen (see Częstochowa); here, Łagiewniki became, on the threshold of the third millennium, the shrine of universal mercy, turned not toward a single nation but toward the whole world. Between the two runs a single thread: a priest, then a pope, Karol Wojtyła — John Paul II —, a son of this land, who carried the message of Łagiewniki to the ends of the Church.[4][5]
Łagiewniki, the shrine of Mercy
The district, the convent and the hill
Łagiewniki is today a district of Kraków, south of the historic centre, long separated from the city by fields and factories. It was here that the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy established one of its houses at the end of the nineteenth century, thanks to the generosity of Prince Aleksander Lubomirski, who funded the construction of the convent and its neo-Gothic chapel. The complex, completed in the 1890s, took in young girls and women in difficulty, whom the sisters helped back onto their feet through work, schooling and prayer.[6][7]
Today's visitor must distinguish two realities nested on the same site. On the one hand, the old convent and its convent chapel, modest, where the miraculous image of the Merciful Christ and the tomb of Saint Faustina are found: this is the historic and prayerful heart of the shrine. On the other, the great modern basilica, raised nearby at the turn of the third millennium to accommodate the crowds the small chapel could no longer hold. When a pilgrim says he is "going to Łagiewniki", he comes first to stand before the image and the tomb, in the chapel where it all began.[8][9]
The Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy
The congregation that keeps the shrine was not born in Kraków. Founded in the nineteenth century for the moral and spiritual raising up of women, it had made it its mission to welcome those whom society rejected. When Faustina entered it in 1925, she was therefore not joining a prestigious contemplative order, but an active, hardworking community devoted to an apostolate of concrete mercy: feeding, teaching, raising up. Providence willed that it should be in this congregation, turned toward mercy for one's neighbour, that the great revelation of God's mercy blossomed.[10][11]
It is a point the shrine never stops recalling: mercy received calls for mercy given. Faustina herself noted that Jesus demanded of her not only trust, but works: "by deed, by word, by prayer".[12] The devotion of Łagiewniki is not a sentimental piety; it is ordered toward acts.
Why Kraków, and not somewhere else?
The question is worth asking, since Poland already possesses, in Częstochowa, the mightiest of its national shrines. The answer lies in a convergence that few places bring together: a mystic whose writings shaped a universal devotion; an image that is its visible support; a tomb that makes Łagiewniki a place of presence and not only of memory; and finally a pope, John Paul II, who, having worked close by during the war and carried the message of mercy all his life, made it the shrine of a Jubilee and of a millennium.[13][14] The mystic, the image, the tomb and the pope: it is from their meeting that the shrine of Mercy was born.
Saint Faustina Kowalska
From Głogowiec to Łagiewniki
Helena Kowalska was born on August 25, 1905 in Głogowiec, in central Poland, the third child of a large and poor peasant family. Drawn very early to religious life, she entered the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in 1925 and received the name of Sister Maria Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament. Her religious life unfolded in the humblest tasks — kitchen, garden, gate —, in several houses of the congregation, including Vilnius, Płock and Kraków-Łagiewniki.[15][16]
Nothing, outwardly, distinguished this young sister of fragile health and scant schooling. It is precisely this obscurity that John Paul II would underline at her canonization:
"Sister Faustina lived hidden away in her convent in Łagiewniki in Kraków, making her life a hymn to mercy." — John Paul II, canonization homily, April 30, 2000[17]
The Diary (Dzienniczek)
At the order of her confessors, Faustina wrote down in a notebook the graces, visions and interior words she received. This spiritual journal, published under the title Diary (Dzienniczek), became one of the great mystical texts of the twentieth century. In it, in simple language, one reads the pedagogy of a God who wants to be known as mercy before being feared as judge:
"Today I am sending you out to all humanity with My mercy. I do not want to punish aching mankind, but I desire to heal it, pressing it to My Merciful Heart." — Jesus to Saint Faustina, Diary[18]
The history of the Diary was eventful: misunderstood, translated with errors, the writing was for a time placed on the Index of suspended devotions by the Holy Office (1959), before being fully rehabilitated by a new critical translation and by the decisive action of the Archbishop of Kraków, Karol Wojtyła, in the 1960s-1970s.[19][20] It is one of the most striking paradoxes of this story: the future pope of Mercy was first the advocate who rehabilitated the mystic of his diocese.
Death at Łagiewniki (October 5, 1938)
Stricken with tuberculosis, Faustina died at Łagiewniki on October 5, 1938, at thirty-three, the very age of Christ. She was first buried in the community cemetery, then her remains were transferred, after the first steps toward beatification, to the convent chapel, beneath the image of the Merciful Christ. Today, a white marble sarcophagus holds her relics, just below the painting she had received the mission to have painted: the apostle of Mercy rests beneath the image of Mercy.[21][22]
Beatification (1993) and canonization (2000)
The beatification process, long suspended because of the doubts weighing on the Diary, resumed after the rehabilitation of the writings. John Paul II beatified Faustina on April 18, 1993, then canonized her on April 30, 2000, Divine Mercy Sunday, in Saint Peter's Square. She is the first saint canonized of the third millennium. On the same day, the pope announced that the second Sunday of Easter would henceforth be celebrated, for the universal Church, as Divine Mercy Sunday:
"It is important then that we accept the whole message that comes to us from the word of God on this Second Sunday of Easter, which from now on throughout the Church will be called 'Divine Mercy Sunday'." — John Paul II, canonization homily, April 30, 2000[23]
The image of the Merciful Christ
The vision at Płock (February 22, 1931)
The origin of the image lies in a vision received at Płock on February 22, 1931. Faustina sees Christ dressed in white, His right hand raised in blessing, His left hand touching His garment at the breast, from which issue two rays, one red, the other pale. Jesus asks her to have this image painted with an inscription:
"Paint an image according to the pattern you see, with the signature: Jesus, I trust in You. I desire that this image be venerated, first in your chapel, and then throughout the world." — Jesus to Saint Faustina, Diary §47[24]
The two rays: blood and water
The meaning of the two rays is given by Christ Himself in the Diary: the pale ray signifies the water which justifies souls; the red ray, the blood which is the life of souls. Both issue from the Heart opened on the Cross, "when My agonized Heart was opened by a lance".[25] The image is therefore not a new devotion juxtaposed to the faith: it is an icon of Calvary, the reminder of the blood and water that flowed from the pierced side (John 19:34), sources of the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist.
"The Blood and Water which poured forth from My Heart as from a fount of mercy, is for souls." — Jesus to Saint Faustina, Diary[26]
Three images for one same model
The material history of the image is, for its part, eventful, and it must be distinguished from the message. The painting venerated at Łagiewniki is not the first executed in Faustina's lifetime, but a later work, painted by Adolf Hyła. Three main stages stand out:
| Image | Author, place, date | Distinctive feature |
|---|---|---|
| Image of Vilnius | Eugeniusz Kazimirowski, Vilnius, 1934, under Faustina's direction | First painting, executed in the saint's lifetime; kept today in Vilnius |
| Image of Łagiewniki | Adolf Hyła, Kraków, 1943-1944 | Gift of the Sisters; became the most reproduced and venerated image in the world |
| Images of the worldwide devotion | copies and variants of the twentieth century | Planetary diffusion starting from the Łagiewniki model |
The first image, painted in Vilnius in the studio of Eugeniusz Kazimirowski in 1934, was done under Faustina's own direction and thanks to the insistence of her confessor. It is this version that corresponds chronologically to the vision. But it is the later painting by Adolf Hyła, offered to the Łagiewniki convent around 1943-1944, that spread throughout the world and that pilgrims come to venerate today in the chapel.[27][28]
"Jesus, I Trust in You"
The inscription willed by Christ — Jezu, ufam Tobie, "Jesus, I Trust in You" — is not an ornament: it is the key to the whole devotion. The image does not merely represent; it asks for a response, trust. Jesus tells Faustina: the image is "a reminder of the demands of My mercy, because even the strongest faith is of no avail without works" (Diary §742), and He promises grace to "whoever will venerate this image".[29][30] Trust is thus the "vessel" with which one draws from the fountains of mercy.
Devotion to Divine Mercy
The Łagiewniki shrine is not only a place: it is the home of a structured devotion, handed down by the Diary and recognized by the Church. Four main forms are attached to it, which pilgrims come to practise on site.
The Chaplet of Divine Mercy
Revealed to Faustina in Vilnius in 1935, the Chaplet of Divine Mercy is prayed on ordinary rosary beads. In it one offers to the Father "the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity" of the Son, "in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world", asking for mercy "for us and for the whole world".[31] Its simplicity made its universal success: it is one of the most widespread Catholic prayers of the twentieth century.
The Hour of Mercy (3 o'clock)
Faustina also receives the invitation to honour, each day at three o'clock in the afternoon, the hour of Christ's agony on the cross — the Hour of Mercy:
"At three o'clock, implore My mercy, especially for sinners; and immerse yourself, if only for a brief moment, in My Passion, particularly in My abandonment at the moment of agony. This is the hour of great mercy for the whole world." — Jesus to Saint Faustina, Diary[32]
Divine Mercy Sunday
Christ asks again, in the Diary, for the institution of a Feast of Mercy on the first Sunday after Easter, with a promise of exceptional grace for those who approach the sacraments then.[33] This request, long kept private, was fulfilled by John Paul II on the very day of the canonization, April 30, 2000, when he extended Divine Mercy Sunday to the whole Church.[34]
Blessed Michał Sopoćko
The devotion would never have gone beyond the convent walls without Blessed Michał Sopoćko (1888-1975), priest and theologian, Faustina's spiritual director in Vilnius. It was he who had the first image painted, studied and defended the message, and worked to have it recognized by the Church, through the difficult years when the Diary was under suspicion. Beatified in 2008, he is inseparable from the history of the devotion.[35][36]
The Basilica of Divine Mercy (2002)
Building for the crowds
As the devotion spread, the small convent chapel no longer sufficed to hold the pilgrims come from all over the world. A modern basilica was therefore raised nearby, between 1999 and 2002, to the plans of the architect Witold Cęckiewicz. The building, on two levels, can hold about 5,000 people; its soaring silhouette, dominated by a 77-metre observation tower, has become a landmark of contemporary Kraków.[37][38] But the spiritual centre of gravity remains the old chapel, with the image and the tomb: the basilica is the setting for the crowds, the chapel remains the hearth.
Consecration by John Paul II (August 17, 2002)
On August 17, 2002, during his last journey to Poland, John Paul II consecrated the new basilica of Łagiewniki. The event was laden with emotion: the pope recalled that, a child of the country, he had worked close by, at the Solvay factory, during the Nazi occupation, passing this convent every day.
"It is a great joy for me to be able to consecrate this new church. […] There was a time when one could not imagine that the one who then wore wooden clogs would one day consecrate the Basilica of Divine Mercy in Łagiewniki." — John Paul II, consecration homily, August 17, 2002[39]
The act of entrustment of the world to Divine Mercy
The central gesture of that August 17, 2002 goes beyond the inauguration of a building. Before the Łagiewniki image, John Paul II pronounced an act of entrustment of the whole world to Divine Mercy, which made this shrine the point from which God's mercy was solemnly offered to the humanity of the third millennium:
"I solemnly entrust the world to Divine Mercy. I do so with the burning desire that the message of God's merciful love, proclaimed here by Saint Faustina, may reach all the inhabitants of the earth and fill their hearts with hope." — John Paul II, Łagiewniki, August 17, 2002[40]
"Eternal Father, by the Passion and Resurrection of Your Son, have mercy on us and on the whole world." — invocation of the act of entrustment, August 17, 2002[41]
It is this gesture that made Łagiewniki the "capital of Mercy": not by administrative decree, but because a pope handed the world over, from the image and the tomb of the saint, to the mercy of God.[42]
Minor basilica (2003)
On March 6, 2003, the shrine received the title of minor basilica, sealing its rank in the universal Church. Henceforth, Łagiewniki stands among the great pilgrimage goals of Christendom, alongside the Polish Marian shrines.[43]
John Paul II, the pope of Mercy
Dives in Misericordia (1980)
The bond between Łagiewniki and John Paul II does not date from 2002. From the start of his pontificate, the pope had devoted to mercy his second encyclical, Dives in Misericordia ("Rich in Mercy"), promulgated on November 30, 1980. Without placing Faustina in the foreground, this major text puts mercy back at the heart of the Church's mission in a world marked by anguish and menace.[44] One recognizes in it, transposed into the language of the Magisterium, the very intuition the mystic of Kraków had received: mercy is not a weakness of God, but the form His love takes before the misery of man.
A hidden root of the pontificate
To understand Łagiewniki's place in John Paul II's pontificate, one must recall the geography of his youth. During the occupation, young Karol Wojtyła worked at the Solvay factory, quite near the Łagiewniki convent, and came to pray there. Become Archbishop of Kraków, it was he who relaunched Faustina's cause and obtained the lifting of the restrictions weighing on her devotion. Become pope, he beatified her, canonized her, instituted Divine Mercy Sunday and consecrated the shrine. Few places can claim to have accompanied, from one end to the other, the life of a pope as Łagiewniki accompanied that of John Paul II.[45][46] Providence added one last sign: John Paul II died on April 2, 2005, on the eve of Divine Mercy Sunday, which he had himself instituted.
The shrine today
Benedict XVI and the John Paul II Centre
On May 27, 2006, during his journey to Poland, Benedict XVI came to pray at Łagiewniki, confirming the universal radiance of the shrine. Close to the Basilica of Mercy there then rose a vast Saint John Paul II Centre — "Be Not Afraid" (Centrum Jana Pawła II "Nie lękajcie się"), with its own shrine dedicated to the Polish pope, making this part of Kraków a twin spiritual pole: Mercy and its pontifical apostle, a few hundred metres from one another.[47]
WYD 2016 and Pope Francis
In July 2016, Kraków hosted World Youth Day, placed precisely under the sign of mercy — "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy" (Mt 5:7) — at the heart of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy willed by Pope Francis. On July 30, 2016, Francis came to Łagiewniki, passed through the shrine's Holy Door, prayed before the image and the tomb of Saint Faustina, then himself heard the confessions of five young people before the Mass celebrated at the neighbouring Saint John Paul II shrine. The shrine of Mercy became, for a new generation, the goal of a worldwide pilgrimage.[48][49]
Pilgrims from all over the world
Łagiewniki is today one of the most visited shrines in Poland, visited each year by millions of pilgrims from dozens of countries. They come to pray before the image, to venerate the tomb of Saint Faustina, to pray the chaplet at 3 o'clock, to receive the sacrament of reconciliation — for the shrine of Mercy is, by vocation, a great place of confession. Unlike Częstochowa, shrine of a nation, Łagiewniki is from the outset a shrine of the world: its pilgrims speak every language, and the image is honoured there in every culture.[50][51]
The spiritual meaning of the shrine
What, at bottom, does the pilgrim of Łagiewniki come seeking? Not a Marian apparition, not a healing spring, not an apostle's tomb: an image and a word — Jesus, I Trust in You —, and the certainty that no misery exhausts the mercy of God.
The message of Łagiewniki — the word Jesus addresses to Faustina in the Diary, and not a doctrine of the Magisterium — holds in a double affirmation. First, that mercy is the greatest attribute of God acting in the world ("Proclaim that mercy is the greatest attribute of God", §301): not an easy pardon that would deny sin, but God's love bending over misery to heal it. Then, that the first condition for sharing in it is trust: letting oneself be loved, holding out the vessel of one's heart toward the fountain — a trust inseparable from works (§742) and from the sacraments (§699), as the rest of the Diary recalls. Faustina noted it in a sentence that sums up the whole shrine:
"The more a soul trusts, the more it will receive. Souls that trust boundlessly are My great consolation, because I pour into them all the treasures of My graces." — Jesus to Saint Faustina, Diary[52]
But this trust received at once calls for mercy given back. Christ never separates, in the Diary, the grace received from the work to be done: whoever has been pitied must pity. That is why the shrine of mercy received is also, from its origin, a congregation of mercy given.
"I am giving you three ways of exercising mercy toward your neighbour: the first, by deed; the second, by word; the third, by prayer." — Jesus to Saint Faustina, Diary[53]
On the threshold of a century that had known the camps, the gulags and two world wars, this message arrived just in time. John Paul II, who had crossed those darknesses a few steps from Łagiewniki, understood it better than anyone: if the world of the twentieth century had one last word to hear, it could only be this one.
"In the mercy of God the world will find peace, and man happiness." — John Paul II, Łagiewniki, August 17, 2002[54]
That is what the shrine of Łagiewniki says, and it is all it says: before an image, under the gaze of a Christ with two rays, an exhausted world can say again — Jesus, I Trust in You —, and learn that the mercy of God is greater than all its miseries.
To go further
- Sanctuary of Częstochowa — the other great Polish shrine, that of the Black Madonna and the "Queen of Poland", to be set alongside Łagiewniki, shrine of universal mercy.
- Saint John Paul II — the pope of Dives in Misericordia, who rehabilitated, beatified and canonized Faustina, instituted Divine Mercy Sunday and consecrated the basilica of Łagiewniki.
- Solidarność and Saint John Paul II — the Poland of John Paul II, his roots and his role in the history of the twentieth century.
- The Infinite Love of God: Sacred Heart and Divine Mercy — the doctrine of God's merciful love, of which the Łagiewniki devotion is one of the great expressions.
Notes and References
John Paul II, Homily for the canonization of Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska, April 30, 2000, full text on vatican.va. Facts: canonization in Saint Peter's Square, first saint of the new millennium; "Sister Faustina lived hidden away in her convent in Łagiewniki in Kraków, making her life a hymn to mercy"; institution for the whole Church of "Divine Mercy Sunday" on the second Sunday of Easter.
1 3 11 15 17 19 23 34 36 46John Paul II, Homily for the Mass and the consecration of the Divine Mercy Shrine in Kraków-Łagiewniki, August 17, 2002, full text on vatican.va. Facts: consecration of the new basilica during the pope's last journey to Poland; recall of his work at the Solvay factory under the occupation and of the "man in wooden clogs"; solemn act of entrustment of the whole world to Divine Mercy ("I wish solemnly to entrust the world to Divine Mercy"); invocation "Eternal Father, by the Passion and Resurrection of Your Son, have mercy on us and on the whole world"; "In the mercy of God the world will find peace and man happiness". English quotations from the official Vatican text.
2 4 9 13 22 38 39 40 41 42 45 51 54John Paul II, encyclical Dives in Misericordia ("Rich in Mercy"), November 30, 1980, full text on vatican.va. Second encyclical of the pontificate, devoted to God's mercy in the life of the Church and of the contemporary world; doctrinal background of the devotion recognized at Łagiewniki.
5 14 20 44Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy (Zgromadzenie Sióstr Matki Bożej Miłosierdzia): congregation devoted to the spiritual and moral raising up of women, to which Saint Faustina belonged (entry in 1925, religious name Sister Maria Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament) and which keeps the Łagiewniki shrine. Facts cross-checked with the reference encyclopaedic notices and the Congregation's resources.
6 10 16Divine Mercy Shrine in Kraków-Łagiewniki, reference encyclopaedic and tourist notices (en.wikipedia.org "Divine Mercy Sanctuary"; krakow.wiki; Karnet Kraków): convent and neo-Gothic chapel of the late nineteenth century funded by Prince Aleksander Lubomirski; convent chapel housing the Hyła image and the white marble sarcophagus of Saint Faustina; modern basilica (architect Witold Cęckiewicz, 1999-2002) of about 5,000 seats, 77-m observation tower; consecration by John Paul II on August 17, 2002; title of minor basilica on March 6, 2003; visit of Benedict XVI (2006); neighbouring Saint John Paul II Centre "Be Not Afraid"; visit of Pope Francis during WYD (July 30, 2016); attendance of several million pilgrims per year.
7 8 21 37 43 47 48 50Saint Faustina Kowalska, Diary — Divine Mercy in My Soul (Dzienniczek), §742: the three ways of exercising mercy toward one's neighbour given by Christ — "the first, by deed; the second, by word; the third, by prayer" — underscoring that trust received calls for mercy given back; the same §742 bears the word on the image as "a reminder of the demands of My mercy, because even the strongest faith is of no avail without works". Quotations verified against the text of the Diary (paragraph numbering may vary slightly by edition).
12 30 53Saint Faustina Kowalska, Diary — Divine Mercy in My Soul (Dzienniczek), §1588: words of Christ sending Faustina "out to all humanity" with mercy — "I do not want to punish aching mankind, but I desire to heal it, pressing it to My Merciful Heart". Quotation verified against the text of the Diary (paragraph numbering may vary slightly by edition).
18Saint Faustina Kowalska, Diary — Divine Mercy in My Soul (Dzienniczek), ed. of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, §47. Vision at Płock on February 22, 1931 and order to paint the image with the inscription "Jesus, I Trust in You": "I desire that this image be venerated, first in your chapel, and then throughout the world"; promise of grace to "whoever will venerate this image". Paragraph numbering may vary slightly by edition.
24 29Saint Faustina Kowalska, Diary — Divine Mercy in My Soul (Dzienniczek), §299: explanation of the two rays of the image by Christ — the pale ray signifies the water which justifies souls; the red ray, the blood which is the life of souls; both issue from the Heart opened "when My agonized Heart was opened by a lance" (cf. John 19:34). Quotation verified against the text of the Diary (paragraph numbering may vary slightly by edition).
25 26History of the image and of the devotion to Divine Mercy, from the resources of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy (saint-faustina.org): first painting by Eugeniusz Kazimirowski in Vilnius in 1934 under Faustina's direction; Adolf Hyła's image for the Kraków-Łagiewniki convent (around 1943-1944), become the most venerated image in the world; role of Blessed Michał Sopoćko, Faustina's spiritual director, in the making and defence of the image.
27 35"Divine Mercy: The Image of Merciful Jesus — Cracow Łagiewniki" and associated notices (saint-faustina.org / Congregation's blog): distinction between the original image of Vilnius (Kazimirowski, 1934) and the image of Łagiewniki (Hyła), the latter being the one pilgrims venerate in the convent chapel; worldwide diffusion of the Łagiewniki model.
28Saint Faustina Kowalska, Diary — Divine Mercy in My Soul (Dzienniczek), §§474-476 (dictation of September 13-14, 1935, Vilnius): the Chaplet of Divine Mercy — offering to the Father of the "Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity" of the Son, in atonement for the sins "of us and of the whole world", and asking for mercy "for us and for the whole world". Text of the prayer verified against the Diary and the liturgical text of the devotion (paragraph numbering may vary slightly by edition).
31Saint Faustina Kowalska, Diary — Divine Mercy in My Soul (Dzienniczek), §1320: the Hour of Mercy at three o'clock in the afternoon — "At three o'clock, implore My mercy, especially for sinners… This is the hour of great mercy for the whole world". Quotation verified against the text of the Diary (paragraph numbering may vary slightly by edition).
32Saint Faustina Kowalska, Diary — Divine Mercy in My Soul (Dzienniczek), §49 (first request for the feast) and §699 (promise: the soul that approaches confession and communion then "shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment"): Christ's request to institute a Feast of Mercy on the first Sunday after Easter, with a promise of exceptional grace for those who approach the sacraments of penance and Eucharist then. Request fulfilled by John Paul II on April 30, 2000 (cf. [^vat-canon]). Paragraph numbering may vary slightly by edition.
33WYD Kraków 2016: official programme of Pope Francis's apostolic journey to Poland (July 27-31, 2016) — Saturday July 30: visit to the Divine Mercy Shrine (with confessions of young people) then Mass at the Saint John Paul II Shrine (programme relayed by Catholic News Service, June 2016; journey text on ewtn.com/library); Vatican Radio report of July 30, 2016: the pope "heard the confessions of several WYD young pilgrims" before the Mass at the neighbouring shrine dedicated to John Paul II; "five young people" (fsspx.news; krakow-info.com).
49Saint Faustina Kowalska, Diary — Divine Mercy in My Soul (Dzienniczek), §1578 ("The graces of My mercy are drawn by means of one vessel only, and that is — trust. The more a soul trusts, the more it will receive…"): "The more a soul trusts, the more it will receive. Souls that trust boundlessly are My great consolation, because I pour into them all the treasures of My graces". Quotation verified against the text of the Diary (paragraph numbering may vary slightly by edition).
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