A voyage to Japan
St Maximilian was born on January 8, 1894, in Zduńska Wola, central Poland. He was particularly devoted to the Immaculate Virgin Mary and is also known as the Apostle of Consecration to Mary. This devotion was prompted by a vision of the Virgin Mary he had when he was 12. The following year he and his elder brother Francis joined the Conventual Franciscans. In 1918 he was ordained a priest.
Kolbe founded a monthly periodical called Rycerz Niepokalanej (“Knight of the Immaculate”), set up a religious publishing company and established monasteries in Japan and India.
Sheltering Jews
In 1936, Kolbe returned to Poland and opened up a hospital in his monastery once war began. Within the monastery he sheltered 2,000 Jews from persecution and published anti-Nazi leaflets.
The monastery was closed down in February 1941 and Kolbe was arrested, imprisoned and transferred to Auschwitz three months later. During his second month in Auschwitz men were selected to be starved to death to intimidate other prisoners who were considering trying to escape. Kolbe was not chosen but volunteered to take the place of a man who had a family.
Reports of his last days say that he led prayers to Our Lady and that he was the last of the group to remain alive after two weeks of dehydration and starvation. He was given a lethal injection of carbolic acid by guards. He died on August 14.
Patron of drug addicts
Kolbe was beatified as a Confessor of the Faith on October 17, 1910, by Pope Paul VI and beatified in 1982 by Pope John Paul II, who recognised Kolbe as a martyr. St Maximilian is the patron saint of drug addicts, prisoners, families and the pro-life movement.
