page_title: Faustina Kowalska
section_title: Vilnius and meeting Sopoćko
hierarchical_section_title: Faustina Kowalska / Life as nun / Vilnius and meeting Sopoćko
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Dom siostry Faustyny Kowalskiej w Wilnie, ul. Vinco Grybo 29a (dawniej Senatorska). English: A small convent house where Faustina lived in Vilnius.
context_page_description: Maria Faustyna Kowalska, also known as Saint Maria Faustyna Kowalska of the Blessed Sacrament and popularly spelled Faustina, was a Polish Roman Catholic nun and mystic. Her apparitions of Jesus Christ inspired the Roman Catholic devotion to the Divine Mercy and earned her the title of "Secretary of Divine Mercy".
  Throughout her life, Kowalska reported having visions of Jesus and conversations with him, which she noted in her diary, later published as The Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul. Her biography, submitted to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, quoted some of the conversations with Jesus regarding the Divine Mercy devotion.
  At the age of 20 years, she joined a convent in Warsaw. She was later transferred to Płock and then to Vilnius, where she met Father Michał Sopoćko, who was to be her confessor and who supported her devotion to the Divine Mercy. With this priest's help, Sister Faustina commissioned an artist to paint the first Divine Mercy image, based on her vision of Jesus. Father Sopoćko celebrated Mass in the presence of this painting on Low Sunday, also known as the Second Sunday of Easter or, Divine Mercy Sunday.
context_section_description: In late May 1933, Kowalska was transferred to Vilnius to work as the gardener, here tasks including growing vegetables. She remained in Vilnius for about three years until March 1936. The convent in Vilnius then had only 18 sisters and was housed in a few scattered small houses, rather than a large building.
  Shortly after arriving in Vilnius, Kowalska met Father Michael Sopoćko, the newly-appointed confessor to the nuns. He was also a professor of pastoral theology at Stefan Batory University, now called Vilnius University.
  When Kowalska went for the first time to this priest for confession, she told him that she had been conversing with Jesus, who had a plan for her. After some time, Sopoćko insisted on a complete psychiatric evaluation of Kowalska by Helena Maciejewska, a psychiatrist and a physician associated with the convent. This took place in 1933 and Kowalska passed the required tests and was declared of sound mind.
  Sopoćko then began to have confidence in Kowalska and supported her efforts. He also counselled her to begin keeping a diary and to record the conversations and messages from Jesus of which she had told him. Kowalska told Sopoćko about the Divine Mercy image, and in January 1934, Sopoćko introduced her to the artist Eugene Kazimierowski, who was also a professor at the university.
  By June 1934, Kazimierowski had finished painting the image, based on the direction of Kowalska and Sopoćko, the only Divine Mercy painting that Kowalska saw. A superimposition of the face of Jesus in the Image of the Divine Mercy upon that in the already-famous Shroud of Turin shows great similarity.
  Kowalska wrote in her diary (Notebook I, Item 414) that on Good Friday, 19 April 1935, Jesus told her that he wanted the Divine Mercy image to be publicly honoured. A week later, on 26 April 1935, Sopoćko delivered the first sermon ever on the Divine Mercy, and Kowalska attended the sermon.
  The first Mass during which the Divine Mercy image was displayed occurred on 28 April 1935, the second Sunday of Easter, and was attended by Kowalska. It was also the celebration of the end of the Jubilee of the Redemption by Pope Pius XI. Sopoćko obtained Archbishop Romuald Jałbrzykowski's permission to place the Divine Mercy image within the Gate of Dawn Church, in Vilnius, during the Mass that Sunday, and he celebrated the Mass himself.
  On 13 September 1935, while still in Vilnius, Kowalska wrote of a vision about the Chaplet of Divine Mercy in her diary (Notebook I, Item 476). The chaplet is about a third of the length of the Rosary. Kowalska wrote that the purpose for chaplet's prayers for mercy are threefold: to obtain mercy, to trust in Christ's mercy and to show mercy to others.
  In November 1935, Kowalska wrote the rules for a new contemplative religious congregation devoted to the Divine Mercy. In December, she visited a house in Vilnius that she said she had seen in a vision as the first convent for the congregation.
  In January 1936, Kowalska went to see Jałbrzykowski to discuss a new congregation for Divine Mercy. However, he reminded her that she was perpetually vowed to her current order. In March 1936, Kowalska told her superiors that she was thinking of leaving the order to start a new one that was specifically devoted to Divine Mercy, but she was transferred to Walendów, southwest of Warsaw. She reported that Jesus had said to her: "My Daughter, do whatever is within your power to spread devotion to My Divine Mercy, I will make up for what you lack."
caption: The small convent building where Faustina lived in Vilnius
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