St. Maximilian Kolbe, O.F.M. Conv. Fr.Maximilian Kolbe 1939.jpg Apostle of Consecration to Mary Religious, priest and martyr Born 8 January 1894 Zduńska Wola, Kingdom of Poland, Russian Empire Died 14 August 1941 (aged 47) Auschwitz concentration camp, General Government, Third Reich (Nazi-occupied Poland) Honored in Roman Catholic Church, Lutheran Church, Anglican Church Beatified 17 October 1971, St. Peters Basilica, Vatican City[1] by Pope Paul VI Canonized 10 October 1982, St. Peters Basilica, Vatican City by Pope John Paul II Major shrine Basilica of the Immaculate Mediatrix of Grace, Niepokalanów, Teresin, Masovian Voivodeship, Poland Feast 14 August Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe, O.F.M. Conv., (Polish: Maksymilian Maria Kolbe [maksɨˌmiljan ˌmarja ˈkɔlbɛ]; 8 January 1894 – 14 August 1941) was a Polish Conventual Franciscan friar, who volunteered to die in place of a stranger in the Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz, located in German-occupied Poland during World War II. Before his death he was very active in promoting the veneration of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, founding and supervising the monastery of Niepokalanów near Warsaw, operating a radio station, and founding or running several other organizations and publications. Kolbe was canonized on 10 October 1982 by Pope John Paul II, and declared a martyr of charity. He is the patron saint of drug addicts, political prisoners, families, journalists, prisoners, and the pro-life movement.[2] John Paul II declared him The Patron Saint of Our Difficult Century.[3] Due to Kolbes efforts to promote consecration and entrustment to Mary, he is known as the Apostle of Consecration to Mary.[4] Contents [hide] 1 Biography 1.1 Childhood 1.2 Franciscan friar 1.3 Death at Auschwitz 2 Canonization 2.1 Controversies 2.2 Relics 3 Influence 4 Immaculata prayer 5 See also 6 References 7 Bibliography 8 External links Biography[edit] Childhood[edit] Future Saint Maximilian was born Raymund Kolbe on 8 January 1894 in Zduńska Wola, in the Kingdom of Poland, which was a part of the Russian Empire, the second son of weaver Julius Kolbe and midwife Maria Dabrowska.[5] His father was an ethnic German[6] and his mother was Polish. He had four brothers. Shortly after his birth his family moved to Pabianice.[5] Kolbes life was strongly influenced by a childhood vision of the Virgin Mary that he received in 1906 in Pabianice.[2] He later described this incident as follows: That night I asked the Mother of God what was to become of me. Then she came to me holding two crowns, one white, the other red. She asked me if I was willing to accept either of these crowns. The white one meant that I should persevere in purity, and the red that I should become a martyr. I said that I would accept them both.[7] Franciscan friar[edit] In 1907, Kolbe and his elder brother Francis decided to join the Conventual Franciscans.[8] They enrolled at the Conventual Franciscan minor seminary in Lwów later that year. In 1910, Kolbe was allowed to enter the novitiate, where he was given the religious name Maximilian. He professed his first vows in 1911, and final vows in 1914,[2] adopting the additional name of Maria (Mary).[5] Kolbe was sent to Rome in 1912, where he attended the Pontifical Gregorian University. He earned a doctorate in philosophy in 1915 there. From 1915 he continued his studies at the Pontifical University of St. Bonaventure where he earned a doctorate in theology in 1919[5] or 1922[2] (sources vary). He was highly active in the consecration and entrustment to Mary During his time as a student, he witnessed vehement demonstrations against Popes St. Pius X and Benedict XV in Rome during an anniversary celebration by the Freemasons. According to Kolbe, They placed the black standard of the Giordano Brunisti under the windows of the Vatican. On this standard the archangel, St. Michael, was depicted lying under the feet of the triumphant Lucifer. At the same time, countless pamphlets were distributed to the people in which the Holy Father (i.e., the Pope) was attacked shamefully.[9][10] Soon afterward Kolbe organized the Militia Immaculata (Army of the Immaculate One), to work for conversion of sinners and enemies of the Catholic Church, specifically the Freemasons, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary.[2] So serious was Kolbe about this goal that he added to the Miraculous Medal prayer: O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee. And for all those who do not have recourse to thee; especially the Masons and all those recommended to thee.[11] The Immaculata friars utilized the most modern printing and administrative techniques in publishing catechetical and devotional tracts, a daily newspaper with a circulation of 230,000 and a monthly magazine with a circulation of over one million. Kolbe also used radio to spread his Catholic faith and to speak out against the atrocities of the Nazi regime. He is the only canonized saint to have held an amateur radio license,[citation needed] with the call sign SP3RN.[12] Maximilian Kolbe, on a West German postage stamp, marked Auschwitz In 1918, Kolbe was ordained a priest.[13] In July 1919 he returned to the newly independent Poland,[2] where he was very active in promoting the veneration of the Immaculate Virgin Mary.[5] He was also strongly opposed to leftist - in particular, communist - movements.[5] From 1919 to 1921 he taught at the Kraków seminary.[2][5] Around that time, as well as earlier in Rome, he suffered from tuberculosis.[2][13] In 1922 he founded the monthly periodical Rycerz Niepokalanej (Knight of the Immaculate),[2] a devotional publication based on French Le Messager du Coeur de Jesus (Messenger of Jesus Heart).[5] From 1922 to 1926 he operated a religious publishing press in Grodno.[5] As his activities grew in scope, in 1927 he founded a new Conventual Franciscan monastery at Niepokalanów near Warsaw, which became a major religious publishing center.[2][13][5] A junior seminary was opened there two years later.[2] Between 1930 and 1936, Kolbe undertook a series of missions to East Asia.[5] At first, he arrived in Shanghai, China, but failed to gather a following there.[5] Next, he moved to Japan, where by 1931 he founded a monastery at the outskirts of Nagasaki (it later gained a novitiate and a seminary) and started publishing a Japanese edition of the Knight... (Seibo no Kishi).[2][13][5] The monastery he founded remains prominent in the Roman Catholic Church in Japan.[2] Kolbe decided to build the monastery on a mountainside that, according to Shinto beliefs, was not the side best suited to be in harmony with nature. When the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Kolbes monastery was saved because the other side of the mountain took the main force of the blast.[14] In mid-1932 he left Japan for Malabar, India, where he founded another monastery; this one however closed after a while.[2] Meanwhile, the monastery at Niepokalanów began in his absence to publish the daily newspaper, Mały Dziennik (The Little Daily), in alliance with the political group, the National Radical Camp (Obóz Narodowo Radykalny).[2][5] Poor health forced Kolbe to return to Poland in 1936.[2] Two years later, in 1938, he started a radio station at Niepokalanów, the Radio Niepokalanów.[2][15] Death at Auschwitz[edit] Stained glass image of Kolbe as a concentration camp prisoner, at the Conventual Franciscan church of Szombathely, Hungary After the outbreak of World War II, which started with the invasion of his country by Nazi Germany, Kolbe was one of the few brothers who remained in the monastery, where he organized a temporary hospital.[5] After the town was captured by the Germans he was briefly arrested by them on 19 September but released on 8 December.[2][5] He refused to sign the Deutsche Volksliste.[16] Upon his release he continued work at his monastery, where he and other monks provided shelter to refugees from Greater Poland, including 1,000-2,000 Jews whom he hid from Nazi persecution in their friary in Niepokalanów.[14][13][17][2][18][16] Kolbe also received permission to continue publishing religious works, through significantly reduced in scope.[16] The monastery thus continued to act as a publishing house, issuing a number of anti-Nazi publications.[2][13] On 17 February 1941, the monastery was shut down by the Nazi German authorities.[2] That day Kolbe and four others were arrested by the German Gestapo and imprisoned in the Pawiak prison.[2] On 28 May, he was transferred to Auschwitz as prisoner #16670.[19] Continuing to act as a priest, Kolbe has been subject to cruel punishment, and had to be smuggled to a prison hospital by friendly inmates.[2][16] At the end of July 1941, three prisoners disappeared from the camp, prompting SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch, the deputy camp commander, to pick 10 men to be starved to death in an underground bunker in order to deter further escape attempts. When one of the selected men, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out, My wife! My children!, Kolbe volunteered to take his place.[8] According to an eye witness, an assistant janitor at that time, in his prison cell, Kolbe led the prisoners in prayer. Each time the guards checked on him, he was standing or kneeling in the middle of the cell and looking calmly at those who entered. After two weeks of dehydration and starvation, only Kolbe remained alive. The guards wanted the bunker emptied and they gave Kolbe a lethal injection of carbolic acid. Kolbe is said to have raised his left arm and calmly waited for the deadly injection.[13] His remains were cremated on 15 August, the feast day of the Assumption of Mary. Canonization[edit] The first monument to Maximilian Kolbe in Poland in Chrzanów On 12 May 1955 Kolbe was recognized as the Servant of God.[16] Kolbe was venerated by Pope Paul VI on 30 January 1969, beatified as a Confessor of the Faith by the same Pope in 1971 and canonized as a martyr by Pope John Paul II on 10 October 1982.[2] Upon canonization, the Pope declared St. Maximilian Kolbe not a confessor, but a martyr.[2] The miracle which was used to confirm his beatification was the July 1948 cure of intestinal tuberculosis in Angela Testoni, and in August 1950, the cure of calcification of the arteries/sclerosis of Francis Ranier was attributed to Kolbes intercession.[2] The statue of Kolbe (left) above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey. After his canonization, St. Maximilian Kolbes feast day was added to the General Roman Calendar. He is one of ten 20th-century martyrs who are depicted in statues above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey, London.[20] Controversies[edit] Kolbes recognition as a Christian martyr also created some controversy within the Catholic Church[21] in that, while his ultimate self-sacrifice of his life was most certainly saintly and heroic, he was not killed strictly speaking out of odium fidei (hatred of the Catholic faith), but as the result of an act of Christian charity, which Pope Paul VI himself had recognized at his beatification by naming him a Confessor and giving him the unofficial title martyr of charity. Pope John Paul II, however, when deciding to canonize him, overruled the commission he had established (which agreed with the earlier assessment of heroic charity), wishing to make the point that the systematic hatred of (whole categories of) humanity propagated by the Nazi regime was in itself inherently an act of hatred of religious (Christian) faith, meaning Kolbes death equated to martyrdom.[21] Kolbe has also been accused of anti-Semitism based on the content of these newspapers, which included claims of a Zionist plot for world domination, a claim made several times in the American press.[22][23][24] Slavoj Zizek describes his activities as writing and organizing mass propaganda for the Catholic Church, with a clear anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic edge.[25] [23] A number of writers pointed out that the Jewish question played a very minor role in Kolbes thought and work.[26][23][23] On those grounds allegations of Kolbes anti-semitism have been denounced by Holocaust scholars Daniel L. Schlafly Jr. and Warren Green, among others.[23] During World War II Kolbes monastery at Niepokalanów sheltered Jewish refugees,[23] and, according to a testimony of a local: When Jews came to me asking for a piece of bread, I asked Father Maximilian if I could give it to them in good conscience, and he answered me, Yes, it is necessary to do this because all men are our brothers.[26][18] Kolbe often vilified in Jewish literature as an avowed anti-Semite, despite hundreds of testimonials of gratitude for the assistance... several from the survivors of the Polish Jewish community.[18] Kolbes antisemitism was a source of the controversy in the 1980s in the aftermath of his canonization.[27] As of 2014, Kolbe has still not been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.[28] Relics[edit] First-class relics of Kolbe are hairs from his head and beard, preserved without his knowledge by two friars at Niepokalanów who served as barbers in his friary between 1930 and 1941.[29] Since his beatification in 1971, more than 1,000 such relics have been distributed around the world for public veneration.[29] Second-class relics such as his personal effects, clothing and liturgical vestments, are preserved in his monastery cell and in a chapel at Niepokalanów, and may be viewed by visitors.[29] Influence[edit] Kolbes influence has found fertile ground in his own Order of Conventual Franciscan friars, in the form of continued existence of the Militia Immaculatae movement.[30] In recent years new religious and secular institutes have been founded, inspired from this spiritual way. Among these the Missionaries of the Immaculate Mary - Father Kolbe, the Franciscan Friars of Mary Immaculate, and a parallel congregation of Religious Sisters, and others. The Franciscan Friars of Mary Immaculate are even taught basic Polish so they can sing the traditional hymns sung by Kolbe, in the saints native tongue.[31] According to the friars, Our patron, St. Maximilian Kolbe, inspires us with his unique Mariology and apostolic mission, which is to bring all souls to the Sacred Heart of Christ through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Christs most pure, efficient, and holy instrument of evangelization – especially those most estranged from the Church.[31] Kolbes views into Marian theology echo today through their influence on Vatican II.[2] His image may be found in churches across Europe.[20] Several churches in Poland are under his patronage, such as the Santctuary of Saint Maxymilian in Zduńska Wola or the Church of Saint Maxymilian Kolbe in Szczecin.[32][33] A museum, Museum of St. Maximilian Kolbe There was a Man, was opened in Niepokalanów in 1998.[34] In 1963 Rolf Hochhuth published a play significantly influenced by Kolbes life and dedicated to him, The Deputy.[16] In 2000, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (U.S.) designated Marytown, home to a community of Conventual Franciscan friars, as the National Shrine of St. Maximilian Kolbe. Marytown is located in Libertyville, Illinois, and also features the Kolbe Holocaust Exhibit.[35] Polish Senate declared the year 2011 to be the year of Maximilian Kolbe.[36] Immaculata prayer[edit] Kolbe composed the Immaculata prayer as a prayer of consecration to the Immaculata, i.e. the immaculately conceived Virgin Mary.[3 Attributes Prison uniform, needle being injected into an arm Patronage Against drug addictions, drug addicts, families, imprisoned people, journalists, political prisoners, prisoners , pro-life movement, amateur radio.[2]
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