← All saints
Saint Maximilian Kolbe
Image: Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Saint Maximilian Kolbe

A Polish Franciscan friar who died at Auschwitz in 1941

Rank
Saint
Kind
Martyr, Priest, Religious
Life
1894 – 1941
Era
20th century
Feast
14 August
Countries
Poland
Poland

Life story

Maximilian Maria Kolbe, baptised Rajmund, was born on 8 January 1894 at Zduńska Wola, in Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. He entered the Conventual Franciscans in 1910 and was sent to study in Rome. He was ordained priest in 1918 and earned doctorates in philosophy and theology.

In 1917 he founded the Militia Immaculatae, and he published the periodical Rycerz Niepokalanej. In 1927 he founded the friary of Niepokalanów near Warsaw, a large community with its own printing house. From 1930 he went to Japan, established a community near Nagasaki and published a magazine in Japanese, then returned to Poland in 1936.

After the German invasion of Poland in 1939 he was briefly arrested and released, and Niepokalanów sheltered many refugees. On 17 February 1941 he was arrested again and in May was transferred to Auschwitz. At the end of July, after a prisoner escaped, the camp command selected ten men to be starved to death. According to witnesses, he volunteered to die in place of one of them, Franciszek Gajowniczek, and on 14 August 1941 he was killed by an injection.

He was beatified in 1971, and John Paul II canonised him on 10 October 1982 in Rome, in the presence of Gajowniczek. Gajowniczek survived the war and for decades told what had happened in the camp. The cell in Block 11 where Kolbe died is now a place of remembrance at the Auschwitz memorial, and the friary he founded at Niepokalanów still exists today.

Works and witness

  • Founded the Militia Immaculatae in 1917
  • Founded the friary of Niepokalanów near Warsaw in 1927
  • Served as a missionary in Japan from 1930 to 1936
  • Volunteered to die in place of a fellow prisoner at Auschwitz, August 1941

Saints from the same country

Saint Stanislaus of Kraków, Saint John Paul II, Saint Faustina Kowalska, Saint Jadwiga of Poland

References

  • Martyrologium Romanum
  • Dicastery for the Causes of Saints – biographical profile
  • Acts of the beatification and canonisation process of Maximilian Maria Kolbe

Written by Anawim from documented history. Some details about ancient saints rest on tradition and are marked as such.