August 14 marks the Feast Day of the saint who was martyred at Auschwitz when he offered his life in the place of a stranger: St. Maximilian Kolbe.
Born in Poland in 1894, Kolbe had a vision of the Virgin Mary at the mere age of 10. She offered him two crowns: one white and one red, representing purity and martyrdom. And he told the Virgin he would accept both in his life.
After taking his vows as a Franciscan monk in 1914, Kolbe studied in Rome at the Pontifical Gregorian University. He was ordained a priest and after finishing his studies, he returned to his native Poland.
But within a few years, Kolbe moved to Japan to start a mission with four other friars. There, they founded a monastery in the city of Nagasaki to “win the world for Christ through the Immaculata.” He spent six years on mission before returning to his home country.
Following the Nazi occupation of Poland, Kolbe was eventually imprisoned. In 1941, while in the Auschwitz concentration camp, he witnessed 10 people being sentenced to death. Kolbe offered his life in the place of one of them—a father—and the Nazis accepted. He died of starvation in an Auschwitz cell at the age of 47.
Decades after his death, in 1982, he was canonized by a fellow Pole, Pope John Paul II, who declared him a “martyr of charity.”
And in 2016, while visiting Poland to celebrate World Youth Day, Pope Francis prayed in the tiny dark cell in Auschwitz where St. Maximilian Kolbe was killed.
AT
