“Father Stanislaw Papczynski used to say that, longing for God’s mercy, we must always testify to it with others”, the Polish bishops say in their Pastoral Letter, in the run-up to the canonisation of the new saint from Poland due in St Peter’s Square on Sunday 5th June. The ceremony, the prelates go on, is “an invitation to take in God’s Marcy again and renew the grace received in Holy Baptism, responding to God’s free love with our love for Him and our mercy for the live and dead”. Father Stanislaw Paczynski (1631- 1701), who devoted himself in particular to worshipping the Immaculate Conception as many as 150 years before the proclamation of such dogma, in 1673 founded the first religious order of the Marian Fathers in Poland. In 2011, he was acknowledged by the Polish Parliament as an “example of a citizen whose efforts were inspired by a deep love for his native country”. Recalling the value of father Papczynski’s devotion to his own country, the Polish bishops point out that “God never stops reawakening new witnesses, who, in a given place and at a given time, help men receive the Gospel and experience it in their daily life” and whom “the Church canonises to proclaim the new saints to be genuine examples of living and intercessors with God”.