According to written accounts from the 12th century, the Bishop of Cracow Stanislaus died a martyr’s death at the Church of St Michael the Archangel on Skałka. His worship began to spread in the 13th century and in 1253 his canonisation took place. Shortly before that event his body was buried at the crossing of the naves of the Romanesque cathedral, where he still rests. The statue on the top of the façade reminds of the saint’s patronage of the Church in Cracow and of Poland, as well as the special patronage over the reborn kingdom.
We are all well aware that to enter this Cathedral can not be without emotion. More I say, you can not enter it without the internal tremor, without fear because it contains in it - as in almost no Cathedral of the world - the enormous size, which speaks to us in all our history, our entire past.
cardinal Karol Wojtyla