Pillars of Fire In My Soul

The first is the Decree of January 31, 1968, from the Sacred Congregation for the Causes of Saints by which her Process of Beatification was formally opened in Rome. The second document deals with the message itself. The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a “Notification” signed by the Prefect himself on April 15, 1978, which reversed the “Notification” of 1959. Then, on July 12, 1979, an authoritative interpretation was given to the Superior General of the Congregation of Marians by the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In response to the request made in the name of the American Marian Province of St. Stanislaus Kostka for a clarification of the meaning of the “Notification” by which the former ban was rendered “no longer binding,” Cardinal Seper wrote: ...I have the honor of informing [you] that with the new “Notification” (A.A.S., 30 June 1978, p. 350), arrived at in the light of original documentation examined also by the careful informative intervention of the then Archbishop of Cracow, Card. Karol Wojtyla, it was the intention of the Holy See to revoke the prohibition con- tained in the preceding “Notification” of 1959 (A.A.S., 1959, p. 271), in virtue of which it is understood that there no longer exists, on the part of this S. Congregation, any impediment to the spreading of the devotion to The Divine Mercy in the authentic forms proposed by the Religious Sister mentioned above [i.e., the Servant of God Sister Faustina Kowalska]. [NOTE: Our unofficial trans- lation from the Italian.] It is evident from this that Cardinal Wojtyla was instrumen- tal in obtaining from the Holy See the complete reversal of its original decision regarding the devotion to The Divine Mercy. The lifting of the ban on April 15, 1978, from the work of mercy proposed by Saint Faustina can be recognized as the Divine Mercy … We Trust in You! 17