On May 1 , 1933 she took her final vows as a sister of Our Lady of Mercy . The rest of her life was spent in service to her community and to promoting the message of Divine Mercy , including the Divine Mercy image . St . Faustina died on October 5 , 1938 . In 1965 , Archbishop Karol Wojtyla of Krakow first began promoting her possible cause for canonization . As Pope John Paul II , he beatified her on April 18 , 1993 and canonized her on April 30 , 2000 . Her feast day is October 5 . The life and labors of St . Faustina are a treasure for researchers and students of theology . Her writings on Divine Mercy are especially significant , and her name has even been put forward as a possible future Doctor of the Church . CDU is thus delighted to offer in this issue of Digital Continent a Masters thesis by a recent graduate in the CDU M . A . program for theology : Araceli V . Lardizabal-Carnazzo , M . D . As the reader will note , this is a highly unusual thesis . It is significantly longer than most theses of this kind , and it is distinctly oriented toward a compilation of reflections and excerpts from St . Faustina ' s Diary . Araceli , however , provides a truly valuable piece of research and study in this extended work that reveals the extraordinary holiness of St . Faustina and the relevance and theological depth of the message of Divine Mercy . Above all , in the long compilations of excerpts , Araceli introduces us to the saint herself . As Araceli writes : She was an obscure woman of faith but supremely graced in spiritual life . She lived in union with God single-heartedly , as His suffering servant ( cf . Is 53:1-12 ); and uniquely as His Divine Mercy messenger . Just like the Blessed Mother and the canonized Saints , she lived heroically to be fully conformed to God ' s will . Amid great torment of body and soul , she reached full transformed union by the Blessed Trinity , an extraordinary favor of sanctification of a soul by God that is consistent with the early Greek Christian concept of theosis . The way she matured spiritually to reach sainthood ; how she loved God first ; how she endured great suffering in God ' s will , especially for the Divine Mercy mission ; and her child-like trust in Him and His Church ; help in the understanding of the mystery of human suffering in Christian-Catholic spirituality .