Helena Kowalska died of tuberculosis at the convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in the Łagiewniki district of Kraków on October 5, 1938, aged thirty-three. She had entered the congregation in 1925 as Sister Maria Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament and spent her religious life as a cook, gardener and portress. The Church keeps her memorial on the day of her death.
On February 22, 1931, at Płock, she recorded a vision of Christ in a white garment with two rays issuing from his breast, one pale and one red, and the instruction to have the image painted with the words Jezu, ufam Tobie — Jesus, I trust in You. The first painting was made at Vilnius in 1934 under the direction of her confessor Michał Sopoćko. Her Diary, some six hundred pages written under obedience, sets out the devotion: the image, the Feast of Mercy on the Sunday after Easter, the chaplet, and the hour of three in the afternoon.
The Holy Office placed her writings on the Index in 1959, working from a faulty Italian translation. Karol Wojtyła, as archbishop of Kraków, opened the informative process and pressed for the ban's review; it was lifted in 1978, months before his election. He beatified her in 1993 and canonized her on April 30, 2000, instituting Divine Mercy Sunday for the universal Church on the same day.
Her tomb is in the chapel at Łagiewniki, beneath the original Vilnius-tradition image venerated there. The Basilica of the Divine Mercy was consecrated on the site in 2002, when John Paul II entrusted the world to Divine Mercy; the John Paul II Centre stands across the valley from it in Kraków.
