Celebrating the Memory of Saint Maximilian Kolbe

Yesterday the Church celebrated the memory of Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe, who was a Franciscan priest.

As a scholar, he earned doctorates in philosophy and theology. He was also deeply interested in science. He drew plans for rocket ships, and he had an interest in fire apparatus.

Ordained at age 24, he saw religious indifference as the most serious problem (even poison) of the day. He devoted himself was to combat it.

Father Kolbe had already founded the Crusade of Mary Immaculate (Militia Immaculatae) to fight evil with the witness of the good life, prayer, work, and suffering. He now began a magazine (Knight of the Immaculata), which eventually reached a circulation of over one million. Father Kolbe also initiated other publishing ventures and, eventually, a radio station.

In 1939 the Nazis overran Poland. Father Kolbe and the friars at his monastery were arrested. They released in less than three months, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception. In 1941 he was arrested again as part of a Nazi campaign to get rid of leaders, and he was sent to Auschwitz.

One day, after a prisoner escaped, the camp commandant announced that ten men would die as a punishment. He picked several to send to the starvation bunkers, and one man, Number 16670, stepped from the line and stated, "I would like to take that man's place. He has a wife and children."

"Who are you?" the commandant asked.

The man simply replied, "A priest."

The commandant took Sergeant Francis Gajowniczek out of line and ordered Father Kolbe to go with the other nine. Several days later, on the eve of the Assumption, four of the men were still alive. The jailer came to finish the job with injections of carbolic acid.

Maximilian Mary Kolbe was beatified in 1971 and canonized in 1982 (Francis Gajowniczek was present at his canonization). He is the patron saint of media communications.

For more information about his life, please visit:

Saint Maximilian Kolbe

There is a shrine in Libertyville, Illinois, dedicated to Saint Maximilian:

National Shrine of Saint Maximilian Kolbe

One of the shrine's Father Kolbe had founded, the “Garden of the Immaculate," was located in Nagasaki, the site of one of of the two atomic bomb blasts that hastened the end of World War II.

For a good reflection related to this, please read:

Brother Anthony Josemaria: The Catholic Holocaust of Nagasaki - “Why, Lord?”