1935 & The Chaplet of Mercy

In September 1935 Hitler and his government announced the Nuremberg Laws by which Jews (defined as all those one-quarter Jewish or more) were deprived of their German citizenship and intermarriage with Jews became strictly forbidden. Many Jews departed Germany leaving most of their property behind.

In this same year, Karol Wojtyla,  who would later become Pope John Paul II was now just 15 years old and in secondary school.  He joined the Society of Mary in Dec 1935 and two years later he became its president.

It was into this time that the Lord Jesus dictated the Chaplet of Divine Mercy to Sister Faustina in Vilnius (Lithuania) also in 1935, as a prayer for the appeasement of Divine wrath for the atonement of our sins and those of the whole world.  

"Oh, what great graces I will grant to souls who say this chaplet..." (Diary, 848).

"Through the chaplet you will obtain everything, if what you ask for is compatible with My will" (Diary, 1731).

"Say unceasingly the chaplet that I have taught you. Whoever will recite it will receive great mercy at the hour of death. Priests will recommend it to sinners as their last hope of salvation. Even if there were a sinner most hardened, if he were to recite this chaplet only once, he would receive the grace of My infinite mercy" (Diary, 687).

"It pleases Me to grant everything souls ask of Me by saying the chaplet. When hardened sinners say it, I will fill their souls with peace, and the hour of their death will be a happy one. Write this for the benefit of distressed souls; when a soul sees and realizes the gravity of its sins, when the whole abyss of the misery into which it immersed itself is displayed before its eyes, let it not despair, but with trust let it throw itself into the arms of My mercy, as a child into the arms of its beloved mother (...). Tell them that no soul which has called upon My mercy has been disappointed or brought to shame. I delight particularly in a soul that has placed its trust in My goodness. Write that when they say this chaplet in the presence of the dying, I will stand between My Father and the dying person, not as the just Judge but as the merciful Savior" (Diary, 1541).

"At the hour of their death, I defend every soul that will say this chaplet as I do My own glory (...). When this chaplet is said by the bedside of a dying person, God's anger is placated and his unfathomable mercy envelops the soul" (Diary, 811).