10 Marian Helper • Spring 2025 • Marian.org A Glorious 25 years! It’s hard to believe that 25 years have passed since the canonization of Sr. Maria Faustina Kowalska, the Secretary and Apostle of the Divine Mercy, not to mention the surprise declaration by St. John Paul II that henceforth the Second Sunday of Easter would be Divine Mercy Sunday, a universal feast for the Catholic Church. No wonder the Holy Father is said to have remarked, at the end of that momentous day, “This is the happiest day of my life.” The Marian connection Perhaps the second most happy person that historic day was the late, great Fr. Seraphim Michalenko, MIC (1930-2021), who devoted his life’s work to the cause of Divine Mercy. In 1979, he brought St. Faustina’s Diary out of Communist Poland in his luggage on microfilm — he always insisted he hadn’t smuggled anything; the Polish authorities simply hadn’t checked his bag. In 1981, he was present with the Digan family for the miraculous healing of Maureen Digan’s lymphedema at the tomb of Sr. Faustina in Kraków, Poland, a miracle he would document and verify with medical testimony so that it became the beatification miracle. Father Seraphim oversaw the publication of the Diary, first in Polish, and then in translation in more than 20 languages, reaching a worldwide audience by the time of St. Faustina’s canonization. The ongoing bestseller status of the Diary is one of the clearest signal graces to those of us who work on Marian Press books of the truth of Faustina’s private revelations — a book so large, so out of chronological order, and telling Sister Beata Piekut, ZMBM, vice-postulator for the cause of beatification of Sr. Faustina, greeted Pope St. John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square on April 30, 2000. By Chris Sparks “Today my joy is truly great in presenting the life and witness of Sr. Faustina Kowalska to the whole Church as a gift of God for our time.” So proclaimed Pope St. John Paul II a quarter-century ago in St. Peter’s Square on Divine Mercy Sunday, April 30, 2000, before a gathering of 200,000 pilgrims. Silver Jubilee
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