Maximilian Kolbe

Saint Maximilian Kolbe
File:St Kolbe Prayer Card.jpg A prayer card showing St. Kolbe before Mary as the Immaculate Conception, with a prison camp depicted in the background.
Martyr
Born	8 January, 1894 Zduńska Wola, Poland
Died	14 August, 1941 Auschwitz concentration camp, Poland
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church, Lutheran Church
Beatified	17 October 1971, St. Peter Basilica, Rome, Italy by Pope Paul VI
Canonized	10 October 1982, Rome, Italy by Pope John Paul II
Major shrine	Basilica of the Immaculate Mediatrix of Grace, Niepokalanów, Poland
Feast	14 August
Patronage	20th century, power workers, drug addiction, drug addicts, families, amateur radio

Maximilian Kolbe (January 8, 1894–August 14, 1941), also known as Maksymilian or Massimiliano Maria Kolbe and "Apostle of Consecration to Mary," born as Rajmund Kolbe, was a Polish Conventual Franciscan friar who volunteered to die in place of a stranger in the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz in Poland.

He was canonized by the Catholic Church as Saint Maximilian Kolbe on October 10, 1982 by Pope John Paul II, and declared a martyr of charity. He is the patron saint of drug addicts, vegetarians, families, power workers, radio hams and the 20th century.

Biography

Kolbe, the son of a Polish family with partial German origin, was born in 1894 in Zduńska Wola, at that time part of Russia, as the second son of Juliusz Kolbe and Marianna Kolbe (née Dąbrowska). His parents moved to Pabianice, where they worked first as weavers, then ran a bookstore. Later, in 1914, his father joined Józef Piłsudski's Polish Legions and was captured and executed by the Russians for fighting for the independence of a partitioned Poland.

In 1907, Kolbe and his elder brother Franciszek decided to join the Conventual Franciscan Order. They illegally crossed the border between Russia and Austria-Hungary and joined the Conventual Franciscan junior seminary in Lwów. In 1910, Kolbe was allowed to enter the novitiate. He professed his first vows in 1911, adopting the name Maximilian, and the final vows in 1914, in Rome, adopting the names Maximilian Maria, to show his veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

In 1912, he was sent to Kraków, and, in the same year, to Rome, where he studied philosophy, theology, mathematics, and physics. He earned a doctorate in philosophy in 1915 at the Pontifical Gregorian University, and the doctorate in theology in 1919 at the Pontifical University of St. Bonaventure. During his time as a student, he witnessed vehement demonstrations against Popes St. Pius X and Benedict XV by the Freemasons in Rome and was inspired to organize the Militia Immaculata, or Army of Mary, to work for conversion of sinners and the enemies of the Catholic Church through the intercession of the Virgin Mary. In 1918, he was ordained a priest. In the conservative publications of the Militia Immaculatae, he particularly condemned Freemasonry, Communism, Zionism, Capitalism and Imperialism.

In 1919, he returned to the newly independent Poland, where he was very active in promoting the veneration of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, founding and supervising the monastery of Niepokalanów near Warsaw, a seminary, a radio station, and several other organizations and publications. Between 1930 and 1936, he took a series of missions to Japan, where he founded a monastery at the outskirts of Nagasaki, a Japanese paper, and a seminary. The monastery he founded remains prominent in the Roman Catholic Church in Japan. Kolbe decided to build the monastary on a mountain side that, according to Shinto beliefs, was not the side best suited to be in tune with nature. When the atomic bomb struck Nagasaki, Kolbe's monastery was saved because the blast of the bomb hit the side of the mountain that the monastery was not located on, said side took the main blow of the blast. Had Kolbe built the monastery on the side of mountain Shintos advised him to choose, his work would have been destroyed.

Auschwitz

During the Second World War, in the friary, Kolbe provided shelter to people from Greater Poland, including 2,000 Jews. He was also active as a radio amateur, with Polish call letters SP3RN, vilifying Nazi activities through his reports.

On February 17, 1941, he was arrested by the German Gestapo and imprisoned in the Pawiak prison, and, on May 25, was transferred to Auschwitz I as prisoner #16670.

In July 1941, a man from Kolbe's bunker had vanished, prompting Karl Fritzsch, the Lagerführer, to pick 10 men from the same bunker to be starved to death in the notorious torture block, Block 11, in order to deter further escape attempts. (The man who had disappeared was later found drowned in the camp latrine). One of the selected men, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out, lamenting his family, and Kolbe volunteered to take his place.

After three weeks of dehydration and starvation, only four of the ten men were still alive, including Kolbe. During the time in the cell, he led the men in songs and prayer. The cells were needed, and Kolbe and the other three were executed with an injection of carbolic acid in the left arm.

Kolbe is one of ten 20th-century martyrs from across the world who are depicted in statues above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey, London. He was canonized by Pope John Paul II on 10 October 1982, in the presence of Gajowniczek.

See also

• Holocaust theology
• Amateur radio history

References

• Maximilian Kolbe Catholic-forum.com
• Kolbe, Mt Maria College
• Rees, Laurence. Auschwitz: A New History, Public Affairs, 2005. ISBN 1-58648-357-9