Despite is global popularity in recent decades, the Divine Mercy devotion has received scant scrutiny from scholars. This article examines its historical development and evolving appeal, with an eye toward how this nuances our understanding of Catholic devotions in the “age of Vatican II.” The Divine Mercy first gained popularity during World War II and the early Cold War, an anxious era in which many Catholic devotions flourished. The Holy Office prohibited the active promotion of the Divine Mercy devotion in 1958, owing to a number of theological concerns. While often linked with the decline of Catholic devotional life generally, the Second Vatican Council helped set the stage for the eventual rehabilitation of the Divine Mercy devotion. The 1958 prohibition was finally lifted in 1978, and the Divine Mercy devotion has since gained a massive following around the world, benefiting in particular from the enthusiastic endorsement of Pope John Paul II. The testimonies of devotees reveal how the devotion’s appeal has changed over time. Originally understood as a method for escaping the torments of hell or purgatory, the devotion developed into a miraculous means to preserve life and, more recently, a therapeutic tool for various forms of malaise.
The author of the above quotation, Rudolf Jokiel, was one of over twelve million ethnic Germans expelled from their homes in Germany's eastern provinces (East Prussia, Pomerania, Brandenburg, and Silesia), the Sudetenland, and other pockets of Eastern Europe at the end of World War II and resettled within the country's truncated postwar borders. The expellees bitterly lamented their enforced exile, and many Christians within this population shared Jokiel's sentiments concerning the connection between faith and homeland. Those who settled in the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) developed an elaborate network of overlapping subcultures dedicated to preserving their memories of lost homelands and advocating for their right to return there. In the process, these lands came to acquire a distinctly religious aura, holy places that were integral to their spiritual well-being.
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