Portal:Catholic Church/Patron Archive/August 14 2007

Kolbe, the son of a Polish family with partial German origin, was born in 1894 in Zduńska Wola, at that time part of Russian Empire, as the second son of Juliusz Kolbe and Marianna Kolbe (née Dąbrowska).

In 1907, Kolbe joined the Conventual Franciscan Order. 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 took a great interest in astrophysics and the prospect of space flight. 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. In 1918, he was ordained a priest.

In 1919, he returned to 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.

During the Second World War, in the friary, Kolbe provided shelter to refugees 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 barrack had vanished, prompting the Lagerführer (i.e., the camp commander), to pick 10 men from the same barrack to be starved to death in Block 11 (notorious for torture). One of the selected men, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out, lamenting his family, and Kolbe volunteered to take his place.

During the time in the cell, he led the men in songs and prayer. After three weeks of dehydration and starvation, only Kolbe was still alive. Finally he was executed with an injection of carbolic acid.

Attributes:
Patronage: 20th century, Pro-Life Movement, drug addiction, drug addicts, power workers, families. amateur radio
Prayer: A Prayer for the Intercession of St. Kolbe O Lord Jesus Christ, who said, "greater love than this no man has that a man lay down his life for his friends," through the intercession of Saint Maximilian Kolbe whose life illustrated such love, we beseech you to grant us our petitions...