A priest in Vilnius listened to a young nun describe what she had seen — Christ in a white robe, one hand raised in blessing, the other at the breast, and from the opening of the garment two great rays, one red and one pale — and then went looking for a painter. Eugeniusz Kazimirowski painted the picture in Vilnius in 1934, to the nun's own directions and at the priest's arranging, and it was the first image of the Merciful Jesus. The nun is St Faustina Kowalska. Her confessor, Michał Sopoćko, lies in Białystok.
His reliquary stands in a side chapel of the Sanctuary of Divine Mercy in the Białostoczek district, in a church whose forecourt held some seventy thousand people on the morning he was declared blessed. Two more churches draw pilgrims into the middle of the city. One is the archcathedral, where a white late-Renaissance church of the seventeenth century stands joined at the flank to a red neo-gothic one many times its size, and where a copy of the Ostra Brama Mother of Mercy of Vilnius wears crowns blessed in Rome. The other is on the hill at the top of ul. Lipowa: an octagon of reinforced concrete raised as the nation's thanksgiving for independence, every surface of it cut with the facets of rock crystal, a three-metre Madonna on a gilded Piast crown at the head of its tower.
Białystok is the chief city of Podlasie, in the north-east of Poland. Under the tsars its Catholics answered to the bishop of Vilnius, and when the frontier drawn after the Second World War left Vilnius outside Poland, the part of that archdiocese remaining inside came here with its archbishop and its seminary. At the beatification the metropolitan of Minsk-Mohilev called Sopoćko the patron of three nations — Belarus, Lithuania and Poland.
📜 History & Spiritual Significance
The white church at the centre of the town was raised in the early seventeenth century by Piotr Wiesiołowski, marshal of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and finished by his son Krzysztof. Jan Klemens Branicki furnished it in the late baroque: the white-and-gold high altar with an Assumption painted by his court artist Augustyn Mirys, an organ built for him by a Warsaw organ-maker, polychrome across the walls. The hearts of three Branickis lie in marble on either side of that altar. Franciszek Karpiński wrote his devotional songs in this town, and they were sung in this church before the Basilian press at Supraśl printed them — the morning hymn Kiedy ranne wstają zorze, the evening Wszystkie nasze dzienne sprawy, the carol Bóg się rodzi, and a song on the mercy of God.
By the end of the nineteenth century the parish numbered some twelve thousand people and the church held a thousand. The dean, Fr Wilhelm Szwarc, asked leave to build a new one on the hill of St Roch and was refused; Russification policy allowed no new Catholic churches. What the tsar's officials granted instead was permission to enlarge the church the Wiesiołowskis had built. Józef Pius Dziekoński drew again: pull down the presbytery of the old church, and set across its axis a cathedral ninety metres long in red brick, three naves and a transept, twin towers at the front. It went up as an extension, watched by an administration the townspeople had largely bought.
In July 1944 the Germans falling back from the eastern front began the planned destruction of Białystok, and the centre burned out. A group of townspeople under the dean, Fr Aleksander Chodyka, kept the fire off the churches; the fara and St Roch were standing when it was over. The next year Romuald Jałbrzykowski, archbishop of Vilnius, put out of a see now on the far side of a state border, came to Białystok and made the fara his pro-cathedral.
What the Church of Vilnius could not bring with it, it copied. A canvas of the Ostra Brama Mother of Mercy, painted in Vilnius by Łucja Bałzukiewiczówna and carried out of the city with the painter and her family, was given to the pro-cathedral. A chapel was built for it in the left arm of the transept on the pattern of the gate at Vilnius — an arch below for the carriageway, three arcades above for the chapel windows — and Cardinal Karol Wojtyła blessed it. Years afterwards, as pope, he blessed in Rome the silver-gilt crowns that hang on the image. That altar is the Marian sanctuary of the archdiocese. He had already given the church the rank of a minor basilica; he erected the diocese of Białystok in 1991 and raised it to an archdiocese the following year.
The hill the tsar had refused carried an eighteenth-century masonry chapel and a graveyard closed since the end of the nineteenth century. The bishop of Vilnius gave Fr Adam Abramowicz leave to found a second Catholic parish in Białystok and to build there. Seventy-six designs came in to the competition and Abramowicz accepted none of them; the competition was run again, and Oskar Sosnowski's project was taken. The church was to be the nation's thanksgiving for the independence regained in 1918, and its first dedication was to have been the Morning Star, the light before daybreak. Sosnowski set it on an octagon whose plan is a star, took the facets of rock crystal as its one motif — the attics, the window heads, the flat ceilings of the ambulatory — and built in reinforced concrete, so that a mass of that weight reads as light.
The money came almost wholly from the gifts of the faithful, and the work went slowly. The Germans took the shell for barracks and put an observation post in the tower; Mass was being said inside before the war ended. Stanisław Bukowski completed it, Jałbrzykowski consecrated it to Christ the King, and the title of St Roch, whose chapel had stood on the hill, was added afterwards. On the openwork tower, seventy-eight metres up, a three-metre Mother of God stands on a Piast crown modelled on the crown of Casimir the Great. Francis gave the church the rank of a minor basilica, and in 2018 the President of Poland named it one of fourteen Monuments of History marking the centenary of the independence it was built to thank God for.
Michał Sopoćko came to Białystok in 1947, called by Jałbrzykowski to teach in the archdiocesan seminary. He had been Faustina's confessor and spiritual director in Vilnius, had the first image of the Merciful Jesus painted at her direction, and gave the rest of his life to the devotion. He died in a rented room on ul. Poleska and was buried in the parish cemetery; once his cause was opened, his remains were carried across the city to a crypt in the lower church of a parish then building in the Białostoczek district, and that parish became the Sanctuary of Divine Mercy. On 28 September 2008 the prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints read out Benedict XVI's letter declaring Sopoćko blessed, in front of six cardinals, more than a hundred bishops and some seventy thousand pilgrims standing before the doors. His feast is kept on 15 February, the day of his death.
The altar at which John Paul II said Mass in Białystok was taken down afterwards and rebuilt beside the Divine Mercy church. Every evening the Apel Jasnogórski is sung at it.
☩ Pilgrimage Sites in Białystok
Sanctuary of Divine Mercy
Sanktuarium Miłosierdzia Bożego
The pilgrim who comes to Białystok for the Divine Mercy comes here. In a reliquary in a side chapel, before an image of the Blessed, rest the remains of Blessed Michał Sopoćko, the Vilnius priest who was St Faustina Kowalska's confessor and the man she obeyed when she said Christ had asked for an image painted with the words Jezu, ufam Tobie — Jesus, I trust in You. Relics of St Faustina herself were placed in the lower church by Archbishop Stanisław Szymecki on 21 November 1993. The two who carried the message of Mercy between them are honoured in the same building.
The church is deliberately of its own century — brick and reinforced concrete, raised on the Białostoczek housing estate to a competition design by Andrzej Nowakowski and Janusz Pawłowski. The reconstructed papal altar stands outside it. The sanctuary's own site carries Mass and devotion times.
Archcathedral Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Bazylika Archikatedralna Wniebowzięcia Najświętszej Maryi Panny
Two churches stand joined here: the small white fara, and the red neo-gothic cathedral the tsar's officials would permit only as its extension.
The old church holds the Branicki mausoleum — two tombs of black and coloured marble flanking the altar, containing the hearts of the family, the second brought from Rome by Izabella Branicka; beneath it are the founders' crypts and the crypts of the archbishops of Białystok. In the new church the great neo-gothic high altar of the Assumption hides, among its apostles, a figure of the parish priest who built the place, Fr Wilhelm Szwarc, holding a cross. The organ of 65 stops fills the nave at the cathedral organ concerts each summer.
The chapel of Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn, in the left arm of the transept, is the diocesan Marian sanctuary. A further altar of the Merciful Jesus, prepared for the Jubilee of 2000, carries windows of St Faustina and Blessed Michał Sopoćko.
The church is open to visitors outside service hours; the parish site lists Mass times.
Basilica of St Roch
Bazylika św. Rocha
The church stands on the hill at the top of ul. Lipowa. Inside, crystalline star vaults answer the rock-crystal facets cut across the outer walls, and a chapel here too holds a copy of the Vilnius Gate of Dawn image, with tablets to the soldiers of the borderland regiments. A viewing gallery in the tower is open to visitors without charge in the warmer months; the parish office holds the current hours.
🕯️ Annual Feast Days & Celebrations
Divine Mercy Sunday — the Second Sunday of Easter
The greatest day of the pilgrim year in Białystok falls on the Sunday after Easter, when the Sanctuary of Divine Mercy keeps the feast to which it is dedicated. It is the sanctuary's central celebration, and a novena of preparation runs before it, with parishes and communities from across the archdiocese coming on their appointed days. Pilgrims gather at the relics of Blessed Michał Sopoćko and St Faustina Kowalska — confessor and penitent, both apostles of this devotion — and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy is prayed at three in the afternoon, the hour the devotion keeps. A bishop of the archdiocese presides at the principal Mass.
Blessed Michał Sopoćko — February 15
The liturgical memorial of Blessed Michał Sopoćko is kept on the day he died in Białystok in 1975, and the sanctuary that holds his tomb is where the city marks it. He is the patron of Białystok, a patronage established in February 2016. The day draws pilgrims from across the archdiocese, the Sisters of Jesus the Merciful — the congregation he founded — seminarians of the Białystok seminary, and the city's own authorities. The sanctuary also keeps November 30, the anniversary of the day his remains were laid in the crypt.
Patronal Days and the Anniversary of the Beatification — September 24-28
Białystok keeps its patron's days in late September, closing on September 28, the anniversary of the beatification celebrated on this ground. A procession carries Sopoćko's relics through the city, and the final day brings a Mass for the people of Białystok. The sanctuary marks the anniversary itself with a solemn evening Mass.
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary — August 15
The Archcathedral Basilica keeps its parish odpust on the solemnity to which it is dedicated. Herbs, flowers and wreaths of the harvest are brought to be blessed at every Mass of the day, a Polish custom of long standing, and one Mass is offered for the farmers and gardeners of the parishes round about. A Eucharistic procession follows the evening Mass.
St Roch — August 16
The Basilica of St Roch keeps its patronal odpust on the saint's memorial. Three days of Forty Hours' adoration, from August 13 to 15, prepare for it. On the feast the solemn midday Mass is followed by a Eucharistic procession, and pilgrims walk around the altar of St Roch within the church. A plenary indulgence may be gained on the day under the usual conditions. St Roch is invoked against plague and sickness.
Our Lady of Ostra Brama, Mother of Mercy — November 16
November 16 is the patronal feast of the whole Archdiocese of Białystok, kept at the archcathedral before its copy of the Ostra Brama image. An annual novena precedes it, kept with the bishops of the Białystok Church and with pilgrims who come for it. The devotion has remained close to the families resettled from the eastern borderlands.
🛏️ Where to Stay
Przystań Miłosierdzia (pilgrim accommodation) — The Sanctuary of Divine Mercy runs its own retreat and pilgrimage house, the Harbour of Mercy, in the enlarged presbytery beside the church; it sleeps about fifty in single, double, triple and four-bed rooms, two small apartments and four group rooms, with a kitchen and shared facilities. Groups and individual pilgrims are both taken, and the relics of Blessed Michał Sopoćko are a few steps across the square. Reservations are made through the house's own site, not through a booking portal. Website
Hotel Branicki ⭐⭐⭐⭐ — A four-star hotel on ul. Zamenhofa in the quiet part of the centre, about 300 m from the Archcathedral Basilica and a little over a kilometre from the Sanctuary of Divine Mercy, with a restaurant, a terrace and its own parking. The comfortable choice for a pilgrim who wants the old town on foot. Website ∙ Reserve this hotel
Hotel Esperanto ⭐⭐⭐ — A three-star hotel on ul. Legionowa in the very centre, named for Ludwik Zamenhof, who was born in this city; it stands beside the Planty park and the Branicki Palace, roughly 300 m from the Archcathedral and 1.6 km from the Sanctuary of Divine Mercy. Straightforward middle-priced rooms within walking distance of both city basilicas. Website ∙ Reserve this hotel
More hotels in Białystok on Booking.com →
Accommodation available to book near Białystok. Pilgrim houses and religious guesthouses are listed above — many take bookings directly and do not appear on booking sites.
🚗 Getting There
Białystok lies in Poland's north-eastern corner, 198 km from Warsaw by road, and almost every pilgrim arrives through the capital.
By Air: There are no scheduled passenger flights to Białystok. The city's own airfield at Krywlany, five kilometres south-east of the centre, has no terminal and serves the local aeroclub, the Border Guard and the air ambulance rather than airlines. Fly instead to Warsaw Chopin (WAW), from which trains and long-distance coaches run north-east to Białystok in around three hours.
By Train: PKP Intercity is the operator from Warsaw, and its own figure for the journey is 2 hours 11 minutes on Intercity services and 2 hours 16 minutes on TLK. The line is the E75, part of the Rail Baltica corridor; the Czyżew–Białystok section has been rebuilt for higher speeds, so timings on this route have been improving. Trains arrive at Białystok Główny, ul. Kolejowa 9. From the platforms the Basilica of St Roch is 620 m on foot, up its hill; the Archcathedral and the Sanctuary of Divine Mercy each lie about 1.8 km away.
Pilgrims following the Divine Mercy from its source will want to know that the same station sits on the Vilnius axis: PKP Intercity runs services through Białystok and Suwałki to the border at Mockava, where passengers change on the same platform to LTG Link trains for Kaunas and Vilnius. Polregio works the regional lines within Podlasie, among them the run north to Sokółka.
By Bus: FlixBus operates between Warsaw and Białystok, with a stated journey of about two and a half hours, and runs a further service direct from Warsaw Chopin Airport, taking roughly three hours. Both set down at the main bus station, ul. Bohaterów Monte Cassino 8, which stands 197 m from the railway station — the two are effectively one arrival point.
By Car: The S8 expressway now carries dual carriageway the whole way from Warsaw to Białystok, close to 180 km of it, and PKP Intercity puts the drive at a little over two hours. The road enters the city from the south-west and the centre is signposted throughout. All three shrines are city-centre churches with parish grounds; check the parish sites for current arrangements rather than counting on street parking beside them.
Local Transport: City buses are run by BKM, the Białostocka Komunikacja Miejska, whose timetables and journey planner are at komunikacja.bialystok.pl. Most pilgrims will not need them within the centre: the Sanctuary of Divine Mercy, the Archcathedral and the Basilica of St Roch stand 1.2 to 1.5 km apart, and the whole circuit is comfortably walked in a morning.
📚 Further Reading
Books:
Bl. Michael Sopocko. God's Amazing Mercy: Meditations by St. Faustina's Confessor and Spiritual Director — The meditations of the priest whose relics rest in the Sanctuary of Divine Mercy here, and who was beatified in this city. He was the confessor who told Sister Faustina to write her Diary. (Marian Press, 2024)
Michael Sopocko. The Mercy of God in His Works — Sopoćko's own theological work on Divine Mercy in English translation — the writing by which he carried the devotion from a nun's private revelations into the teaching of the Church. (Marian Fathers, 1962; an old printing, and stock varies)
St. Maria Faustina Kowalska. Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul — The saint's own record of the Divine Mercy revelations, written at her confessor's instruction. Her relics were placed in the Białystok sanctuary beside his.
Sophia Michalenko. The Life of Faustina Kowalska: The Authorized Biography — The authorised life of the saint, and the fullest English account of the years in Vilnius in which she and Fr Sopoćko worked together.
Fr Chris Alar. Understanding Divine Mercy — A plain explanation of the devotion itself — the image, the Chaplet, the Hour of Mercy and the feast — for a pilgrim who comes to the sanctuary knowing little of it. (Marian Press)
Stephen J. Binz. The Way of Mercy: Pilgrimage in Catholic Poland — A pilgrim's guide to the shrines of Catholic Poland, shrine by shrine, for the journey that continues beyond Podlasie. (Marian Press, 2022)
Timothy Snyder. The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 — The history of the borderland Białystok sits in. Sopoćko was born in what is now Belarus, formed in Vilnius and buried here; at his beatification he was called a patron of three nations. (Yale University Press, 2003)
Norman Davies. God's Playground: A History of Poland, Vol. 2: 1795 to the Present — The standard English history of the centuries that built the churches in this guide: the partitions, the independence that St Roch's was raised to commemorate, and the communist decades under which the Divine Mercy parish was founded.
📿 Devotional Items
In the lower church of the Sanctuary of Divine Mercy rest the relics of St Faustina Kowalska; in a side chapel of the same church rest those of Blessed Michał Sopoćko, the confessor who, at her word, had the first image of the Merciful Jesus painted.
Ghirelli Divine Mercy Chaplet, 8 mm beads (Ghirelli) — A chaplet from the Italian rosary makers Ghirelli, strung for the Chaplet of the Divine Mercy, the prayer Christ dictated to St Faustina, whose relics rest in the lower church here.
Venerare Divine Mercy Chaplet with White and Red Beads (Venerare) — The white and red beads carry the two rays of the image Christ asked St Faustina to have painted; the Merciful Jesus is venerated in this sanctuary.
Divine Mercy Image, Jesus I Trust in You, framed — A framed print of the Merciful Jesus beneath the words Jezu, ufam Tobie — Jesus, I trust in You — that Christ asked to be inscribed there. Blessed Michał Sopoćko, who lies in this church, was the priest who had the first such image painted.
🎥 Recommended Videos
ks Michał Sopoćko i jego Miasto Miłosierdzia — The archdiocese's own portrait of Blessed Michał Sopoćko and the city that grew around his work. Archdiocese of Białystok, Polish, 9 minutes.
Sanktuarium Miłosierdzia Bożego w Białymstoku — A tour of the Sanctuary of Divine Mercy, its image of the Merciful Jesus and the relics it keeps. Archdiocese of Białystok, Polish, 7 minutes.
Bazylika św. Rocha w Białymstoku. Saint Roch's Basilica in Białystok. (Poland) — The modernist basilica on the hill filmed inside and out, with its octagonal plan and the statue of the Mother of God on the tower. Polish, 8 minutes.
🔗 Useful Links
Sanctuary of Divine Mercy — Blessed Michał Sopoćko — The sanctuary's own pages on its beatified confessor: his life, his tomb in the church, the Thursday devotions before his relics, and the prayer trail that follows him through the city.
Archcathedral Basilica — Mass and devotion times — Current Sunday, weekday and holy-day Mass hours for the archcathedral and its two subsidiary churches, with confession and rosary times.
Parish of St Roch — contact and office hours — Address, telephone and parish-office hours for the basilica on the hill, useful when arranging a group visit.
Archdiocese of Białystok — The diocesan site: parish directory, daily readings, and news of archdiocesan pilgrimages.
Białystok Tourist Information — The city's official portal page for its year-round tourist information point at ul. Legionowa 2.
🥾 Pilgrim Routes
Białostocka Piesza Pielgrzymka na Jasną Górę — The archdiocese's walking pilgrimage to Częstochowa, about 480 km on foot in fourteen days. It leaves the Archcathedral after Mass at 6:00 on 30 July and reaches Jasna Góra on 12 August, with nights at Suraż, Mień, Nur, Miedzna, Wierzbno, Siennica, Góra Kalwaria, Zbrosza Duża, Kostrzyń, Mroczków Duży, Chełsty, Strzelce Małe and Pacierzów. Some 220–300 walk it each year, in colour-named groups. Registration is taken at the Cathedral Arcades in the five days before departure; those who cannot walk may enrol in the grupa złota, the golden group, and carry the pilgrimage in prayer from home. bppnjg.pl
Ekumeniczna Piesza Pielgrzymka Białystok–Wilno — More than 140 km east from the Archcathedral to the Gate of Dawn in Vilnius, before the shrine of Our Lady of Mercy. Five days in the second half of August, with nights at Szudziałów, Kuźnica, Butrymańce and Jaszuny. Its name is exact: the walk is made with Orthodox as well as Catholic pilgrims, and Orthodox parishes on the road receive it. The older way ran through Grodno in Belarus; that border is no longer crossed, and part of the distance is now covered by coach.
Piesza Pielgrzymka z Krzyżami do Świętej Wody — A one-day walk in mid-September from the cathedral to the Marian shrine at Święta Woda in Wasilków, made since 1997. Pilgrims set out at 11:00, each carrying a small wooden cross for a personal intention, and plant it on the Góra Krzyży, the hill of crosses beside the sanctuary; Mass follows at 15:00. It closes the pilgrimage season of the Archdiocese of Białystok, and because the road is short, families with small children and the elderly walk it in numbers.
Piesza Pielgrzymka Kobiet do Świętej Wody — The women's pilgrimage to the same shrine, walked on the Saturday before Mother's Day, with the figure of Our Lady of Sorrows carried at the head; about four hundred women walked it in 2025. Departure is at 14:00 and Mass at Święta Woda at 18:00. Those who cannot walk the road join the pilgrimage at the sanctuary.
🧭 Nearby Pilgrimage Destinations
Święta Woda (11 km north) — The Marian sanctuary of Our Lady of Sorrows at Wasilków, built around a spring credited with a healing in 1719, with a Hill of Crosses carrying a 25-metre Jubilee Cross and the Paths of the Seven Sorrows through the woods.
Sokółka (38 km north-east) — The Eucharistic miracle of 2008: a consecrated Host that would not dissolve, examined by pathologists of the Medical University of Białystok and found to be heart tissue.
Studzieniczna (81 km north) — A Marian sanctuary beside a spring in the Augustów Forest, where St John Paul II prayed and drank the water in 1999.
Kodeń (139 km south) — The sanctuary on the Bug at the Belarusian border, holding the icon of Our Lady that Mikołaj Sapieha carried home from the papal chapel in 1631.
Marijampolė (159 km north) — In Lithuania, the basilica where Blessed Jurgis Matulaitis-Matulevičius lies buried — the Bishop of Vilnius who, as Jerzy Matulewicz, gave leave for the founding of Białystok's parish of St Roch.
Vilnius (222 km north-east) — In Lithuania, the city where the first image of the Divine Mercy was painted under the direction of Fr Michał Sopoćko, whose relics rest in Białystok, and where the Gate of Dawn holds the image both Białystok basilicas copy.
🪶 Closing Reflection
"To orędzie Bożego Miłosierdzia, orędzie Chrystusa miłosiernego wyszło z tej ziemi, przeszło także przez wasze miasto — i poszło szeroko w świat." "This message of Divine Mercy, the message of the merciful Christ, went out from this land, it passed also through your city — and went far out into the world."
