Saint Maximilian Kolbe

Maximilian Maria Kolbe OFMConv (born Raymund Kolbe; Polish: Maksymilian Maria Kolbe; 8 January 1894 – 14 August 1941) was a Polish Conventual Franciscan friar, priest, missionary, and martyr. He volunteered to die in place of a man named Franciszek Gajowniczek in the German death camp of Auschwitz, located in German-occupied Poland during World War II. He had been active in promoting the veneration of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, founding and supervising the monastery of Niepokalanów near Warsaw, operating an amateur-radio station (SP3RN), and founding or running several other organizations and publications. On 10 October 1982, Pope John Paul II canonized Kolbe and declared him a martyr of charity. The Catholic Church venerates him as the patron saint of amateur radio operators, drug addicts, political prisoners, families, journalists, and prisoners. John Paul II declared him "the patron of our difficult century". His feast day is 14 August, the day of his martyrdom. Due to Kolbe's efforts to promote consecration and entrustment to Mary, he is known as an "apostle of consecration to Mary". Raymund Kolbe was born on 8 January 1894 in Zduńska Wola, in the Kingdom of Poland, then a puppet state of the Russian Empire. He was the second son of weaver Julius Kolbe and midwife Maria Dąbrowska. His father was an ethnic German, and his mother was Polish. Raymund had four brothers, two of whom died of tuberculosis. Shortly after his birth, his family moved to Pabianice in Poland. In 1903, when he was age nine, Kolbe experienced a vision of the Virgin Mary. He later described this incident: In 1907, Kolbe and his elder brother Francis joined the Order of Friars Minor Conventual, known as the Conventual Franciscans. They enrolled at the Conventual Franciscan minor seminary in Lwów, in present-day Ukraine, later that year. In 1910, the Franciscans allowed Raymund Kolbe to enter the novitiate, where he chose a religious name, Maximilian.