Portal:Catholicism/Patron Archive/October 5 2007

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Mary Faustina Kowalska, commonly known as Saint Faustina, born Helena Kowalska (August 25, 1905, Głogowiec, then in Russian Empire – October 5, 1938, Kraków, Poland) was a Polish nun and mystic, now venerated in the Roman Catholic Church as a saint.

Helena Kowalska was the third of ten children born to a poor family. At the age of fifteen, having attended just three years of school, she started work to support her family. Around this time she was considering a vocation in the Catholic church. She claimed that God himself was calling her to be a nun. Helena left for Warsaw, and applied to various convents in the capital, only to be turned down each time. She was finally accepted at the convent of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. She was eventually initiated as a nun on April 30, 1926, with the name Sister Maria Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament.

Sister Faustina claimed to have visited Purgatory, and to have seen and spoken to Jesus and Mary several times. Later on, Jesus allegedly revealed her purpose; to spread the devotion of the Mercy of God. On February 22, 1931, Jesus was said to have appeared as the 'King of Divine Mercy', wearing a white garment.

In 1936, Faustina became extremely ill, speculated to be from tuberculosis. She was moved to the sanatorium in Pradnik. The last two years of St. Faustina’s life were spent working as much as she could between visits to the sanatorium and time spent sick in bed in the convent. St. Faustina died on October 5 1938.

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