On August 9, 1976, Cardinal Karol Wojtyła visited our church. He celebrated Holy Mass, and afterward sat at a table together with priests and the faithful in the school hall. The future great saint, John Paul II, walked across these very floors of ours!

The Krakow cardinal was in the United States for the bicentennial celebrations of American independence and the International Eucharistic Congress. It was—as it was called at the time—the event of the century.

Just nine months earlier, Cardinal Wojtyła had passionately argued in Rome for the opening of the beatification process for the Venerable Sister Faustina Kowalska.

He brought to Baltimore his devotion to the message of Divine Mercy proclaimed by the Polish nun.

Two years later, in 1978, he was elected Pope.

Fifty years later—as a community of the faithful of the Parish of the Holy Rosary and the Sanctuary of Divine Mercy, blessed with the daily closeness of a merciful God—we recall this event with gratitude and look to the future with hope, entrusting ourselves, our families, and our parish to the intercession of Saint John Paul II and the care of Our Lady of the Rosary.

Saint John Paul II, pray for us!