NIEPOKOLANOW Retreat house

St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe

 

Born in, Poland in 1894, Raymond Kolbe became a Conventual Franciscan and took the name Maximilian Maria. Being sick with tuberculosis did not stop his vast apostolate with the founding of the Knights of the Immaculate Movement of Marian consecration in 1917, with  its magazine in 1922 entitled "The Knight of the Immaculate" and with the largest friary/printing press in the world in1927. From 18, it grew to hold 700 Franciscans before WWII. He founded a similar friary in Nagasaki, Japan in 1930. Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Fr. Maximilian was arrested as a political prisoner by the Gestapo and taken to the Nazi Auschwitz Concentration Camp in 1941. Because one prisoner escaped, ten were chosen to die in the starvation bunker. Kolbe offered to take the place of the man who lamented his wife and sons. As a priest, he prayed with and reconciled the fellow prisoners to God. He was killed with an injection, then cremated on  August 14th. Pope John Paul II canonized him as Martyr of Charity on October 10, 1982.