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She seemed to start showing signs and symptoms of tuberculosis since her early twenties
(mid1920s), which reportedly affected her “lungs and digestive tract.” 45 Thus, for health reasons,
in August 1925, she was sent to the Congregation’s vacation house in Skolimow, near Warsaw;
but when her health declined further, she was confined at the Tuberculosis Sanatorium in
Pradnik. 46 She was intermittently confined there, between December 1936 and March 1937, the
last time from April to September 1938, when she became quite weak and bedridden. 47 On
September 17, 1938, still very ill and unable to take in much food, as well as dying; she was
released from the hospital, to the Cracow convent. 48
Back in the convent infirmary, she made the effort to ask forgiveness from all of her
religious Sisters for the “failings” that she committed during her convent life, with the help of
Mother Superior Michael. 49 Yet, she actually blessed those around her by her brave, peaceful,
and cheerful demeanor in the midst of the extended torment from her illness, as well as her
imminent death. 50 On September 26, 1938, Father Michael Sopocko (her divinely elected regular
Confessor and Spiritual Director since 1933) 51 visited her and prayed with her for the last time;
and she predicted to him that she would die on October 5. 52 Fr. Sopocko heard her say, “My one
occupation is to live in the presence of my Heavenly Father,” saw her as seeming “like an
unearthly being,” and believed at last that what she wrote in her Diary on receiving the Eucharist
from a holy Angel was the truth. 53 On October 5, 1938, several hours before she died, Father
Josef Andrasz, S.J. (her first Confessor and Spiritual Director since 1932) also visited her, heard
45
Ibid., Faustina, Diary, xvii, xxxi.
Ibid., Faustina, Diary, xxxi , xxxviii.
47
Ibid., Faustina, Diary, xxxi, xxxviii, xl-xlii; Addenda, 701.
48
Ibid., Faustina, Diary, xli-xlii; Addenda, 701.
49
Ibid., Faustina, Diary, xli-xlii, xxxii.
50
Ibid., Faustina, Diary, # 1795, 1803.
51
Ibid., Faustina, Diary, # 36, 53.
52
Ibid., Faustina, Diary, # 53, xli; Endnotes, 654 -655n22; Odell, Faustina, 149.
53
Ibid., Faustina, Diary, xli-xlii.
46
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