St. Faustina Kowalska

Born Helena Kowalska in rural Poland, the third of ten children, she entered the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy at twenty and worked as cook, gardener, and porter in their convents. From 1931 she received a series of visions of Jesus, asking that the Sunday after Easter be kept as the Feast of Divine Mercy. Her diary, begun under obedience, became one of the most widely read spiritual works of the twentieth century.

Her mystical experiences were intense yet hidden behind the humblest of daily routines. Jesus instructed her to have an image painted with the inscription "Jesus, I Trust in You" and to spread the chaplet and novena of Divine Mercy. Her confessors at first doubted her, but Fr. Michael Sopocko became her steadfast advocate and helped bring her message to the wider Church.

Faustina died of tuberculosis in Krakow on October 5, 1938, at the age of thirty-three — on the eve of the war that would devastate her homeland. John Paul II canonized her in the year 2000 and established the Feast of Divine Mercy she had been asked to promote. Her message — that God's mercy is deeper than any human sin — has reached every continent.