Maksymilian Maria Kolbe

Maximilian Kolbe was a Polish Catholic priest and Conventual Franciscan friar who volunteered to die in place of a man named Franciszek Gajowniczek in the German death camp of Auschwitz, located in German-occupied Poland during World War II. He had been active in promoting the veneration of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, founding and supervising the monastery of Niepokalanów near Warsaw, operating an amateur-radio station (SP3RN), and founding or running several other organizations and publications. On 10 October 1982, Pope John Paul II canonized Kolbe and declared him a martyr of charity. The Catholic Church venerates him as the patron saint of amateur radio operators, drug addicts, political prisoners, families, journalists, and prisoners. John Paul II declared him "the patron of our difficult century". His feast day is 14 August, the day of his martyrdom. Due to Kolbe's efforts to promote consecration and entrustment to Mary, he is known as the Apostle of Consecration to Mary. Kolbe's life was strongly influenced in 1906, when he was 12, by a vision of the Virgin Mary in which she offered him a white crown and a red crown and asked which he would accept. Understanding the white to represent a life of purity and the red to represent martyrdom, he said he would accept them both. The vision deeply affected him, and the following year he and his elder brother joined the Franciscan Conventuals. In 1912 he went to Rome, where he studied theology and philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University. In 1917 he founded the sodality of the Militia of Mary Immaculate, thus making a significant contribution to the international Marian movement. In 1918 he was ordained a priest. Returning to Poland, he established the popular Roman Catholic periodical Rycerz Niepokalanej (“The Knight of Mary Immaculate”) and in 1927 founded the City of Mary Immaculate (Niepokalanów), a religious centre, that eventually attracted some 700 friars and workers. A fervent devotee of the Virgin Mary, he later founded sister institutions in Japan and India. Upon his return to Poland, Kolbe became superior of the City of Mary Immaculate and director of Poland’s chief Catholic publishing complex. In 1938 the centre started its own radio station. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1939 for his anti-Nazism but was later released. He and the remaining brothers used the centre to shelter an estimated 2,000–3,000 Polish refugees, the majority of whom were Jewish, and continued to publish anti-Nazi publications. He was again arrested in February 1941 on charges of aiding Jews and the Polish underground. He was transferred to Auschwitz in May and branded as prisoner 16670. He continued to act as a priest and to offer consolation to his fellow prisoners. In July 1941, after a prisoner had escaped, the deputy camp commander selected 10 prisoners to be starved to death in an underground bunker. When one of the selected men, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out, "My wife! My children!", Kolbe stepped forward and asked to die in his place. His request was granted, and he was the last of the group to remain alive, after two weeks of dehydration and starvation. He was killed with a lethal injection on 14 August 1941. ²