The Lifting of the Ban

In an interview with Fr. Seraphim from 2000, he was asked the following question:

Before he became Pope, John Paul II played a large role in lifting the prohibition [on the divine mercy devotion according to the writings of St. Faustina]. How did that happen?

"It was really the people of his archdiocese in Krakow that influenced Cardinal Karol Wojtyla (later Pope John Paul II) to open the process examining Faustina's heroic virtues in 1965. Part of that process was to examine her writings and interview people who knew her before her death in 1938.

"Cardinal Wojtyla asked one of his top theologians to make a thorough study of her Diary and letters. Faustina had only two winters of formal education so her spelling was pretty atrocious. Many words were spelled phonetically, some words were made into two words, and other times she combined two words into one. So it's easy to see how difficult a task it was for him.

"The report on her writings stated that anyone who lived according to the writings of Sister Faustina would achieve a high degree of sanctity. Moreover, this theologian stated that, in his opinion, the revelations expressed could not have come from the Evil One, but had to have come from a supernatural heavenly source. He considered the Diary a great mystical work.

"The report convinced the Holy See to rescind the prohibition, which it did on April 18, 1978. Six months later, to the day, Cardinal Wojtyla was elected as Pope John Paul II."