Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe

Saint Maximillian Kolbe entered the minor seminary of the Conventual Franciscans in Lvív--then Poland, now Ukraine--near his birthplace, and at 16 became a novice. At age 24, he was ordained.

He founded Knight of the Immaculata, a religious magazine under Mary’s protection to preach the Good News to all nations. Father Kolbe established a “City of the Immaculata”—Niepokalanow—which housed 700 of his Franciscan brothers to produce the publication. He later founded another in Nagasaki, Japan.

In 1939, the Nazi panzers overran Poland, and Niepokalanow was  bombed. Father Kolbe and his friars were arrested. In less than three months, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, they were released, but Father Kolbe was arrested again in 1941. Three months later, a man escaped the concentration camp, and the commandant announced that 10 men would die. 

As those who were selected marched away to the starvation bunkers, Father Kolbe stepped forward and said, “I would like to take that man’s place. He has a wife and children.”

When asked who he was, Father Kolbe answered, “A priest.”

In the “block of death,” they were ordered to strip naked, and their slow starvation began. By the eve of the Assumption, four were still alive. When the jailer came to murder him, Father Kolbe sat in a corner praying. He lifted his arm to receive the shot of carbolic acid that ended his life. Father Kolbe's body was burned with all the others.