In this month dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, celebrated on June 12, Bishop Piotr Sawczuk of the Diocese of Drohiczyn elevated the Church of St. Stanislaus, Bishop and Martyr, in Milejczyce to the status of the Sanctuary of the Sacred Heart of Jesus the Good Shepherd. The ceremony, attended by thousands of people—including clergy, local authorities, parliamentarians, and pilgrims from across the country—was broadcast on Catholic TV Trwam.
Milejczyce is a remote village in the homeland of St. John Paul II, home to merely 350 souls. Yet pilgrims are not drawn there primarily by its rustic beauty. As the pastor, Father Jarosław Rosłon, said, many have heard it said elsewhere: “In Milejczyce, the Lord Jesus truly listens.” It is little wonder, then, that about 50,000 faithful come each year from across Poland, including Catholics from the United States and Australia.
The Meaning of the Image and Its History
The miraculous painting, rich in symbolism, is the earliest recorded image of the Divine Heart in Poland.
A closer look reveals that the sheep has a human eye, a sign of every person’s need for Christ’s closeness. Its ears are not drooped but rather pricked, attentive, and ready to listen, and the creature is turned toward the Good Shepherd. Its nostrils are slightly flared, as if inhaling the Divine fragrance of its Master, and its expression conveys happiness.
Christ’s ear is uncovered, as if awaiting the petitions placed before Him. The red colour, with an orange tinge – the so-called cinnabar – symbolizes Royal Robes, signifying the dignity of Christ as King and Savior. The dark-blue outer garment denotes his office as High Priest. The Lord’s hands bear clear traces of the wounds left by the nails.
The Heart itself, painted upon Christ’s bare breast, serves as a symbol of the sacrifice that takes place upon the Altar. It was created in accordance with the visions of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque.
According to research conducted by conservator Joanna Polaska, the image dates to the final years of the 17th century. It was made from three separate pieces stitched together. Initially, the work was a full-length depiction of the Good Shepherd, modelled on Spanish painting, but it was later shortened to fit into a side altar.
Notably, in 1765, the Kingdom of Poland became the first in the world to obtain a papal privilege, from Pope Clement XIII, that formally approved devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and granted its own proper Mass formula.
When the three partitions of Poland – in 1772, 1793 and 1795 – were imposed by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, ultimately causing the Polish state to cease to exist, the parish found itself under Russian rule. In 1866, the tsarist authorities converted the Catholic church into an Orthodox one. Since the Orthodox Church does not venerate the Heart of Jesus, they sought to remove the Image.
Because many inhabitants of neighbouring villages – not only Catholics, but also those of the Greek Catholic rite – flocked to pray before this image, the sacristan decided to cover the Divine Heart. Reportedly, before long, he took to drinking, lost his eyesight, and both his family and village residents were afflicted by numerous calamities. He is said to have later exclaimed with contrition, “I hid Jesus’ Heart, and Jesus hid his graces from me.”
Three years before Poland regained its independence in 1918, the church was returned to Catholics. In 1920, Blessed Jerzy Matulewicz, the bishop of Vilnius and a devoted servant of the Divine Heart, prayed before this Image. A year later, he re-erected the parish.
From then on, the veneration of the Sacred Heart revived and continued uninterrupted until the late 1970s. Then the communist authorities succeeded in sowing discord within the local community, bringing the cult of the image to near-total collapse. Before that, approximately five hundred pilgrims came, among them members of the Orthodox Church.
The Voice of the Clergy
“When it comes to my testimony, it is full of the signs of the times, as I call them. Moreover, the longer I have been in Milejczyce, the more I see these signs of the times, these signs of Providence. When the first miracles began to occur, I informed the bishop. With great wisdom and prudence, he told me to record them somewhere and to keep them in my heart, rather than publicizing them. And so I did,” recalled the parish priest, Father Rosłon.
This is how God has worked in this place, the priest continued: “When I arrived at the parish, there was only one Sunday Holy Mass, attended by 60 people. On First Fridays of the month, five people would come; currently, about 1,000 people attend. Similarly, on Sundays, one can count about 1,000 pilgrims. We see how the Heart of Jesus causes the parish to flourish, how He blesses it, and how He bestows great graces.”
In another interview, with the Opoka portal, Father Rosłon said, “A ‘spark’ is to emanate from Milejczyce, which will ignite human hearts with God’s love.” He added: “This sanctuary has a special focus on priests. They will come here to cling to the Divine Heart, strengthen their faith, and carry it further. In the future, we also plan to hold a solemn act of enthronement of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.”
In an interview with Vatican News, Father Zenon Czumaj, director of the Diocesan Archive and Museum in Drohiczyn, noted that the image’s widespread veneration in the 19th century was reflected in the fact that it bore two crowns: one placed on the head of Jesus and the other on the lamb resting on his shoulders.
“God has shown his love for this place, a tiny parish in eastern Poland with just 350 people,” said Father Jerzy Jastrzębski.
“The graces flowing from this place are not limited by time or space; they are meant for everyone,” said Father Professor Janusz Królikowski.
“The Heart of Jesus is open to every person – to believers, but also to those who are only beginning to seek truth, grace and light. I believe that not only nonbelievers but also Orthodox Christians come to Milejczyce. Therefore, we do not want to view this place solely through a Catholic lens. Everyone, without exception, has access to the Sacred Heart,” said Bishop Dr. Piotr Sawczuk. He added, “My desire is for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament to continue there without interruption, because devotion to the Eucharist and devotion to the Heart of Jesus are very closely linked.”
“When I started going through the parish archive documents, I found several notes about miraculous healings. For example, there was the healing of a Polish soldier in 1938. He was a uhlan who had fallen off a horse. The doctors said that he would soon die. The soldier asked for prayer in the Milejczyce church, before the miraculous image, and recovered,” said Father Rosłon.
Miracles and Graces
Miracles are one part of the Catholic Faith that makes it hard for even the staunchest sceptic to reject.
Veneration of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in Milejczyce intensified after the restoration of the painting in 2019. Soon afterward, testimonies of graces began to pour in. The parish book of graces (2020-2025) is not a medieval archive in which fact sometimes blends with legend; it is a continuously updated record of the extraordinary workings of grace. Some of the cases described in its pages appear to defy medical explanation, leaving doctors astonished. Still, no one is required to accept such phenomena as supernatural.
Among the many testimonies are accounts of a tumour disappearing in a child, a foetus returning to life in its mother’s womb after doctors had pronounced it dead, and the conception of a child by a couple diagnosed with infertility after years of unsuccessful attempts to conceive.
One such testimony concerns Elżbieta, 65, who came to the church in Milejczyce. For many years, she had worked with Carmelite sisters, conducting occupational therapy, while also caring for her daughter, Monika, 45, who required constant care and used a wheelchair. Doctors told Elżbieta that she should either find someone to care for her daughter or place her in a social care home, because test results indicated that Elżbieta would not survive. Her condition continued to worsen. Witnesses saw that she needed help entering the church and approaching the miraculous image. During this time, many people prayed for her healing. Three weeks later, when the tests were repeated, there were no longer any cancer cells in her body.
Another striking case involved Szymon, who was admitted to the hospital with a heart defect and kidney failure. Sepsis also developed. Several carloads of pilgrims travelled to Milejczyce to attend the Holy Mass offered for the child’s intention and to pray for his recovery. Then a message came from his mother: For the first time in months, the boy’s condition had improved, something the doctors could not explain. Day by day, Szymon recovered. After a week, he was discharged from the hospital.
A girl named Blanka was born in Białystok and diagnosed with pneumonia. The doctor was surprised, because her mother was healthy, and the girl was placed in an incubator. After a few hours, it became clear that Blanka was dying and that nothing could be done to save her. When her mother learned this, she was devastated, but she passed the news on to her family. Her sister called the parish priest in Milejczyce and asked for prayers. “I promised to pray that day at 7 p.m. It was November 2023. About twenty people came to pray: relatives and friends. Half an hour after the Holy Mass offered for the girl’s intention, when everyone had already left and was on the way back to Białystok, I received a phone call saying that Blanka had been taken out of the incubator and was no longer in danger.” recalled the parish priest, Father Rosłon.
Dr. Tadeusz Wasilewski, a gynaecologist who runs an infertility clinic in Białystok, first came to Milejczyce for a Holy Mass requested by his patients for him and his family. Since then, couples who come to his office receive, in addition to professional help, a holy card of the Good Shepherd from Milejczyce, along with an invitation to visit this extraordinary place. During one visit, the doctor mentioned a couple from Switzerland who had been trying to conceive for several years without success. “We arranged a testing plan and asked them to come back with the results. Before that, however, I gave them the holy card and suggested that they go to Milejczyce. They did. Two weeks later, they called me with the joyful news that they were expecting a child.”
On numerous occasions, the parish priest felt inspired to celebrate Holy Mass at midnight for a particular intention. Some time later, he received a phone call informing him that an infant in an incubator—whom doctors had given no chance of survival—had recovered and was already cradled in its mother’s arms.
“We lived in the United States. We worked, owned a home, and had cars. We thought we were living a normal life, but in reality, we were focused only on ourselves,” Wioletta Biesaga told Opoka. Her son died in an accident, and she herself narrowly survived. Today, she speaks of “small miracles” received through the intercession of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Graces Beyond Borders
Devotion to the miraculous image from Milejczyce is also spreading beyond Poland, including to the United States, Canada, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The pastor says that, within two years, more than a thousand large images of the Good Shepherd and 60,000 small holy cards have been distributed.
While in the United States, he distributed images of the Good Shepherd of Milejczyce after Mass. He later learned of an Italian man named Patrick, a lifelong mafioso who had not been to confession for 40 years. After receiving the miraculous image from a woman named Ewa in the hospital, along with an explanation of its symbolism, the man wept like a child and begged for a priest. A few weeks later, he died reconciled with God.
Today, in New York City and the surrounding area alone, several dozen copies of the miraculous image from Milejczyce are already peregrinating. “I would never have thought that God would use me and this small image in such a way. But the Heart of Jesus truly reaches people,” recalled Father Rosłon.
Conclusion
In our current milieu, amid the confusion and hopelessness felt by an increasing number of people, especially the young, the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a true remedy. Everyone needs it, wherever they live – Melbourne, Detroit, Bangalore, or Vancouver. Perhaps Milejczyce is an urgent reminder of the message given to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in 1673.
“My Divine Heart is so inflamed with love for men, and for you in particular that, being unable any longer to contain within Itself the flames of Its burning Charity, It must needs spread them abroad by your means, and manifest Itself to them (mankind) in order to enrich them with the precious graces of sanctification and salvation necessary to withdraw them from the abyss of perdition.”
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.
