St'Maria Faustina Kowalska

Sister Faustina, Helena Kowalska was born on August 25, 1905, in the village of Glogowiec, in Lodz, Poland.

Glogowiec - Birth Place of Faustina

Family photo of Faustina

At the age of 7, she had a very unusual vision - a vision of the Lord which lasted with her. Because she came from a very poor family, she went to work at the age of 14, without completing elementary education. she went to work, first in Aleksandrow, Lodz, and then in Lodz itself. By the time she had turned 15, the call to a religious life was so strong that she informed her parents of her desire to enter the convent.

By the time she was 15 she had made known to her parents her desire to enter the convent.

On August 1, 1925, she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy.

Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy

She went through her postulancy in Warsaw, and then was sent to the novitiate house in Cracow, where during her invertiture she was given the name Sister Mary Faustina and was incorporated into the novitiate.

Novitiate house in Cracow

After a two year novitiate, she made her first profession of vows on April 30, 1928. next, as a temporarily professed sister, she worked in various houses of the Congregation: in Warsaw, in Vilnius, in Kiekrz near Poznan, in Plock, in Biala near Plock, in Warsaw and in Cracow. 

On May 1, 1933, she took her perpetual vows.

After only a few weeks of convent life her health began to deteriorate. She had contracted consumption and lived through several bouts of this illness. In August, 1934, she suffered a violent attack of asthma for the first time. Although the doctors did not state it, it already was, in all likelihood, tuberculosis, which subsequently progressed to such an extent that in 1936 she spent the last five months of her life in that same hospital; and after having been brought back to the convent in Cracow, she died there on October 5th.