Saint Maximilian Kolbe

Saint Maximilian Kolbe (1894 - 1941)

Priest
Martyr
Confessor of the Faith

There are a handful of witnesses for Christ who not only symbolized all that was good and noble about the twentieth century but died because of all that was godless and evil. Maximilian Kolbe is one of the most shining examples and most beloved but there is so much more to know about this priest who offered his life as a sacrifice so that another might live. Maximilian Maria Kolbe was born Rajmund Kolbe of a Polish mother and German father in Zduńska Wola in west central Poland in 1894.

At the age of twelve, young Rajmund experienced a vision of the Blessed Virgin in which she held out to him two crowns, one of white symbolizing purity and the other of red which symbolized martyrdom. He chose both crowns.

In 1907 Rajmund and his brother entered the novitiate of the Conventual Franciscans, one of the three fraternities that comprise the First Order of Franciscans. Upon entering the novitiate, he took the religious name of Maximilian and later added Maria as well. Maximilian made his first vows as a Franciscan in 1911 and final vows in 1914 before being sent to Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University for doctoral studies.

While in Rome, far from the bucolic Catholicism of his native Poland, Maximilian was exposed to the anticlericalism and atheism directed in particular toward the Catholic Church and the Papacy. Emboldened by Bismarck’s Kulturkampf in Germany, the nationalizing of Church property in France and similar moves in Italy to limit, if not break, the power of the Catholic Church became to Maximilian the greatest evil of the age. What was needed were Soldiers for Christ to fight the good fight under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

For Kolbe, the primary culprits were the Freemasons whose lodges throughout the capitols of Europe and the New World numbered the politicians and policy makers enacting restrictive laws against the Church. Kolbe became virulently anti-Masonic which led to charges of antisemitism that were later, and unfairly, leveled against him.

Ordained in 1918, Maximilian returned to Poland where he continued the fight against growing atheism and anticlericalism, and he felt the best weapon in his arsenal of faith was the printed word. In 1922 he began printing the Knight of the Immaculata, a devotional periodical, and with the success of this and other publishing ventures, founded new Conventual friaries with printing as their primary charism and mission.

In the 1920s Father Maximilian began several missionary trips to the far east where he founded Conventual friaries in Nagasaki, Japan and Malabar, India. When he returned to Poland, Father Maximilian expanded his ministry into radio and he acquired a license as a ham radio operator.

At the outbreak of World War II and the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Maximilian made the short list of those the Nazis considered criminals due to his prominence and activities. While initially allowed to continue his publishing ministry, the fact that he authorized the sheltering of over 2,000 Polish Jews at the friaries under his control made marked man. He was arrested at his friary in February 1941 and with several friars sent to a prison and then to the extermination camp at Auschwitz.

Fr. Maximilian was singled out for horrendous abuse by camp guards but despite the beatings and humiliations he continued his priestly ministry among his fellow inmates, hearing their confessions, offering spiritual comfort and giving them from his own meager food portions. In August 1941 ten inmates were singled out to die the slow and indescribable death in the starvation bunker in punishment for one man escaping the camp. A young man chosen to die, Francis Gajowniczek, began weeping about his wife and children and begged mercy. Fr. Maximilian stepped forward and asked the commandant if he could die in the place of the married man and father. The commandant agreed.

During the two weeks in the bunker, Fr. Maximilian was seen to be calmly in prayer or tending to the others. At the end of two weeks, only he remained alive and on August 14, Vigil of the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, he was murdered with an injection of carbolic acid. His remains were cremated the next day on the feast of the Blessed Virgin to whom he devoted his life with such passion. Saint Maximilian Kolbe was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1982.

The Saint Maximilian Kolbe tile was created in 2021. Our 12" X 12" signed and numbered reproduction is created on stretch canvas and is suitable for matting and framing.