Blessed Fr. Michael Sopocko, STD (1888-1975), was born of Polish parents in what is now Belarus, but spent much of his life as a priest in Lithuania: first as a parish priest in the region of Vilnius during World War I, then as a military chaplain, and finally as a professor of pastoral theology at Stefan Batory University (known today as Vilnius University). He is most famous, however, for being the confessor and spiritual director of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, with whom he came in contact in Vilnius at the convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in 1933. After her death from tuberculosis in 1938, he became a tireless preacher, writer, and scholarly advocate of the Divine Mercy message and devotion given by God to the world through her. Father Sopocko died in Bialystock, Poland, in 1975, and was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008. Robert Stackpole (BA Williams College; MLitt, Oxford University, England; STD, the Angelicum, Rome) has served as the research director, and then director of the John Paul II Institute of Divine Mercy, an apostolate of the Congregation of Marian Fathers, since 1997. In that capacity, he has been the author of numerous web and journal articles, including the online course Divine Mercy Essentials, as well as the author of several books on the Divine Mercy message and devotion, notably Jesus, Mercy Incarnate (Marian Press, 2000), Divine Mercy: A Guide from Genesis to Benedict XVI (Marian Press, revised edition 2009), and Divine Mercy and Divine Justice (The Chartwell Press, 2020).
