St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe

Servants of God

St. Maximilian was born Raymond Kolbe in Zdunska-Vola, 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), that he founded on October 16, 1917.  The Militia of the Immaculata is called the Crusade of Mary Immaculate in Great Britain and has its headquarters in Manchester where it publishes a monthly magazine called “The Crusader”.  

The Church in Niepokalanow (City of the Immaculate)

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 738, making it the largest Catholic religious house in the world.

 
St.Maximilian working at his desk in Niepokalanow, Poland

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, “Knight of Mary Immaculate”, with a circulation of 230,000 and a monthly magazine with a circulation of over one million.  Maximilian started a radio station and planned to build a motion picture studio--he was a true "apostle of the mass media."

The Church in the Garden of the Immaculate in Nagasaki, Japan

He established a Garden of the Immaculate in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1930, and envisioned missionary centers worldwide.  It is worth noting that the ground giving to St. Maximilian to build his church in Nagasaki was not worth much and also not ideal for building.  However, when that Japanese city was devastated by the atomic bomb in 1945 the Garden of the Immaculate was left untouched.

Maximilian was a groundbreaking 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.  There are currently moves to declare the final dogma of Mary as Coredemptrist, Mediatrix and Advocate.

In 1941, the Nazis imprisoned Father Maximilian in the Auchwitz death camp.  On 31st July all the prisoners from his cellblock were paraded out for selection.  A prisoner had escaped the concentration camp so 10 of his fellows were to be selected for punishment – certain death.  There he offered to take the place of another prisoner who had been chosen.  The Commandant of the camp asked why he should take the other man’s place and Maximilian said, “I am a Catholic Priest”.  That was all that his torturer needed to know and the Franciscan priest was condemned to slow death in a starvation bunker.  On August 14, 1941, his impatient captors ended his life with a fatal injection. 

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.