Maximilian Kolbe

Maximilian Maria Kolbe was born Raymund Kolbe on 8 January 1894 in Zduńska Wola, in the Kingdom of Poland then belonging to the Russian Empire. His parents, Julius Kolbe and Maria Dąbrowska, worked as weavers and raised their children in a fervent Catholic household, later moving the family to Pabianice. In childhood he reported a vision of the Virgin Mary who offered him two crowns, one white for purity and one red for martyrdom; he said he accepted both. In 1907 he entered the Conventual Franciscan minor seminary in Lwów with his brother Francis. He received the religious name Maximilian, made simple vows in 1911, and in 1914 professed solemn vows as Maximilian Maria, adding the name of Mary out of devotion to the Immaculate Conception. His father became involved in the Polish independence movement during the First World War.

Sent to Rome for higher studies, Kolbe earned a doctorate in philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University in 1915 and a doctorate in theology at the Pontifical University of St. Bonaventure. He was ordained a priest in 1918. Disturbed by anti-clerical demonstrations in the city, he and several confreres founded the Militia Immaculatae on 16 October 1917, a movement of consecration to the Immaculate Virgin aimed at the conversion of sinners and of those regarded as enemies of the Church. After Poland regained independence he returned in 1919, taught church history in Kraków, and, despite recurring tuberculosis, threw himself into publishing and pastoral work. In 1927 he founded Niepokalanów, the City of the Immaculate, a Conventual Franciscan monastery and mass-media center west of Warsaw that grew into one of the largest Catholic publishing houses in the world, issuing the monthly Knight of the Immaculate and other papers in enormous editions. He also obtained an amateur radio license and used broadcasting as an apostolate.

In 1930 Kolbe left for East Asia. He established a Franciscan mission and the monastery Mugenzai no Sono (Garden of the Immaculate) on a hillside at Nagasaki, together with a Japanese edition of his magazine, and he attempted a foundation in India. Ill health forced his return to Poland in 1936 to resume leadership at Niepokalanów. After the German invasion of September 1939 the monastery was temporarily dispersed; when the friars returned they sheltered numerous refugees, including Jews. Publication continued under occupation until the Gestapo arrested Kolbe on 17 February 1941. He was held at Pawiak prison in Warsaw and on 28 May 1941 was deported to Auschwitz, where he received prisoner number 16670 and was assigned to harsh labor.

In late July 1941 a prisoner escaped from Kolbe's barracks. As a reprisal, SS officer Karl Fritzsch selected ten men to be starved to death in the underground bunker of Block 11. When one of the condemned, Franciszek Gajowniczek, lamented his wife and children, Kolbe stepped forward and offered to take his place. The ten were locked away without food or water. After about two weeks only a few remained alive; Kolbe was killed by an injection of carbolic acid on 14 August 1941. His body was cremated in the camp crematorium, probably on 15 August, the feast of the Assumption. Gajowniczek survived the war and lived until 1995.

Pope Paul VI beatified Kolbe as a confessor on 17 October 1971. Pope John Paul II canonized him as a martyr on 10 October 1982, with Gajowniczek present in St. Peter's Square. The Church keeps his feast on 14 August. He is invoked as a patron of prisoners, political prisoners, journalists, amateur radio operators, families, people struggling with drug addiction, and the pro-life movement, and he remains closely associated with the Militia of the Immaculata and with Niepokalanów.