About St. Maximilian Kolbe

St. Maximilian was born Raymond Kolbe in Poland, January 8, 1894. In 1910, he entered the Conventual Franciscan Order. He was sent to study in Rome where he was ordained a priest in 1918.

Father Maximilian returned to Poland in 1919 and began spreading his Militia of the Immaculata movement of Marian consecration (whose members are also called MIs), which he founded on October 16, 1917. In 1927, he established an evangelization center near Warsaw called Niepokalanow, the "City of the Immaculata." By 1939, the City had expanded from eighteen friars to an incredible 650, making it the largest Catholic religious house in the world.

To better "win the world for the Immaculata," the friars utilized the most modern printing and administrative techniques. This enabled them to publish countless catechetical and devotional tracts, a daily newspaper with a circulation of 230,000 and a monthly magazine with a circulation of over one million. Maximilian started a shortwave radio station and planned to build a motion picture studio--he was a true "apostle of the mass media." He established a City of the Immaculata in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1930, and envisioned missionary centers worldwide.

Maximilian was a ground-breaking theologian. His insights into the Immaculate Conception anticipated the Marian theology of the Second Vatican Council and further developed the Church's understanding of Mary as "Mediatrix" of all the graces of the Trinity, and as "Advocate" for God's people.

During the Nazi invasion and occupation of Poland, Maximilian and his community provided refuge to thousands of displaced people including many Jews. In 1941 he and several friars were arrested and subsequently imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Amid the inhuman brutality of Auschwitz, the prisoners were required to stand guard over each other, knowing that if one them was to escape, ten of the others would summarily be executed.

The day came when one of the prisoners in Maximilian’s detail managed a desperate escape. Immediately the SS officer named the ten men to be executed in retaliation for the escape. Among them was a young married man by the name of Francis Gajowniczek. Shocked by his fate, he cried out in desperation for his wife and children. Suddenly there was a commotion among the haggard group of men as Maximilian Kolbe bravely stepped forward and facing “Butcher” Frisch, the SS commandant, he offered to take Francis’ place. “Who are you?” demanded Frisch. “I am a Catholic priest. I wish to die for that man,” he replied, exchanging places with Francis. With that he and the remaining nine were consigned to the starvation bunker. Three weeks later an emaciated and dehydrated Maximilian Kolbe was killed by means of a lethal injection of carbolic acid.

Pope John Paul II canonized Maximilian as a "martyr of charity" in 1982. St. Maximilian Kolbe is considered a patron of journalists, families, prisoners, the pro-life movement and the chemically addicted.