20th century
Feast: October 5
A barely educated Polish nun whose private diary — filled with conversations with Jesus about mercy — was banned by the Vatican for twenty years before becoming one of the most influential spiritual texts of the twentieth century.
Helena Kowalska had three years of schooling. She worked as a housekeeper and a shop girl. When she applied to convents, she was turned away repeatedly — too poor, too uneducated, not refined enough. The Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy finally accepted her as a lay sister, which meant she did kitchen work, gardening, and door duty. Then Jesus started talking to her. Beginning in 1931, Faustina (her religious name) recorded a series of visions in which Christ asked her to spread the message of Divine Mercy — specifically, to have an image painted showing rays of red and white light streaming from his heart, and to promote a new prayer called the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. Her confessors were divided. Some thought she was a mystic; others thought she was mentally ill. She obeyed her superiors and wrote everything down in a diary that eventually ran to over six hundred pages. The Vatican banned the diary in 1959 due to a faulty translation. Cardinal Karol Wojtyla — the future John Paul II — quietly investigated, had the original Polish text properly translated, and got the ban lifted. As pope, he canonized Faustina and established Divine Mercy Sunday. She died of tuberculosis at thirty-three, having spent her last years in pain so severe she could barely hold a pen.