Maximilian Kolbe

Life events

1. Born — 1894

   Raymund Kolbe was born on 8 January 1894 in Zduńska Wola, in the Kingdom of Poland, then a puppet state of the Russian Empire, the second son of weaver Julius Kolbe and midwife Maria Dąbrowska.

2. Tonsured — 1910

   In 1910 the Conventual Franciscans admitted Kolbe to the novitiate; he took the religious name Maximilian, professed first vows in 1911, and final vows in 1914, adding the name Maria.

3. Other — 1917

   On 16 October 1917, while studying in Rome and in response to Freemason demonstrations against the papacy, Kolbe founded the Militia Immaculatae (Army of the Immaculate One), a prayer movement directed toward the conversion of sinners through Marian intercession.

4. Ordained — 1918

   Kolbe was ordained a priest in 1918 and returned to Poland in July 1919 to teach at the Kraków Seminary, where he continued his work promoting Marian veneration.

5. Other — 1927

   In 1927 Kolbe founded the Conventual Franciscan monastery of Niepokalanów near Warsaw, which became a major religious publishing centre; a junior seminary opened there two years later, and in 1938 he added an amateur radio station operating under the call sign SP3RN.

6. Pilgrimage — 1931

   In 1931, during a missionary journey to East Asia, Kolbe founded the Franciscan monastery Mugenzai no Sono (無原罪の園, Garden of the Immaculata) outside Nagasaki, Japan, which began publishing a Japanese edition of the Knight of the Immaculata.

7. Imprisoned — 1941

   On 17 February 1941 the Gestapo shut down Niepokalanów and arrested Kolbe; he was held at Pawiak prison in Warsaw before being transferred to Auschwitz concentration camp on 28 May 1941 as prisoner 16670.

8. Martyred — 1941

   At the end of July 1941, after a prisoner escaped from Auschwitz, SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch ordered ten men to starve to death in an underground bunker; Kolbe stepped forward to take the place of Franciszek Gajowniczek and died by lethal injection of carbolic acid on 14 August 1941.

Relationships

Documented claims

• Kolbe founded the Militia Immaculatae on 16 October 1917 in Rome after witnessing Freemason demonstrations against Pope Pius X and Pope Benedict XV; it grew into a global Marian movement with millions of members. (certain)
• Between his release from German custody in December 1939 and his arrest in February 1941, Kolbe and his friars at Niepokalanów sheltered approximately 2,000 Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution. (likely)
• Kolbe's recognition as a martyr generated controversy within the Catholic Church because he was not killed in odium fidei (hatred of the faith) but through an act of charity; Pope Paul VI beatified him as a confessor, while John Paul II overruled the commission and canonized him as a martyr of charity in 1982. (certain)
• Kolbe is among 10 twentieth-century martyrs depicted in statues above the Great West Door of the Anglican Westminster Abbey in London, and is commemorated in the Calendar of saints of the Church of England on 14 August. (certain)
• Kolbe held an amateur radio licence with the call sign SP3RN and operated Radio Niepokalanów from 1938; the Catholic Church now venerates him as the patron saint of amateur radio operators. (certain)