Father Maximilian Kolbe, O.F.M., was born on January 7, 1894 in Zdunska-Wola near Lodz, Poland. His simple, pious parents had him baptized with the name Raymond. When he was ten years old, the Mother of God appeared to him. She showed him two crowns, one white and the other red, and said, “Which crown do you want? The white one stands for the preservation of the purity, and the red one – the martyrdom.” Raymond answered, “I choose both!”

In 1907 he entered the minor seminary of the Franciscans in Lvov [= Lviv, Lemberg]. In 1911 he professed temporary vows. In 1912 he was sent to Rome to study. There, on the Feast of All Saints in the year 1914, he made perpetual vows, and on April 28, 1918 he was ordained a priest. Fr. Maximilian returned to Poland in 1919, with doctorates in philosophy and theology, but seriously ill with tuberculosis. The doctors gave him very little time to live. During his long stay in a sanatorium, several freethinkers were converted through his lectures and conversations. After he had recuperated somewhat, he dedicated himself enthusiastically to spreading the Militia Immaculatae, which he had founded while still a student in Rome.

In 1922 he published the first issue of a publication with the title, Knight of the Immaculata. The expenses were covered by funds that had been collected by begging. From 1922 to 1927 he was stationed with his little printing press in the convent in Grodno. Because of the throngs of vocations and the expansion of his press apostolate, he left Grodno and in 1927 founded Niepokalanów, the “City of the Immaculata”, in which he would be appointed superior until 1930.

From 1930 to 1936 he served as a missionary in Nagasaki, Japan, teaching as a professor of philosophy in the major seminary. There he also founded a second “City of the Immaculata” (Mugenzai no Sono), which developed into one of the great missionary centers in Japan.

From 1936 until his death he was again Guardian in Niepokalanów, Poland, which under his direction developed into one of the greatest strongholds of the spiritual life and the apostolate. In 1922 his press apostolate had begun with two religious brothers printing and distributing 5,000 copies of a little newsletter. By 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, the religious community consisted of 762 friars, who staffed a gigantic publishing house that produced a daily newspaper, a monthly magazine, a calendar, books, etc., printed in various languages.

The “City of the Immaculata” was sorely afflicted by the war. Many brothers perished, some of them in the concentration camps. On February 17, 1941 Father Maximilian was arrested. During an inspection by S.S. troops he was brutally beaten. When he regained consciousness, he consoled his companions in suffering by saying, “My friends, you must rejoice with me; this is for souls, for the Immaculata!”

On May 29 he was brought to the concentration camp in Auschwitz. There he asked the commandant whether he might replace the father of a family who had been condemned to death. He survived for eleven days in a starvation bunker and prepared the other condemned men to enter eternity. On August 14, the vigil of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, he was killed by a lethal injection. He was beatified in 1971 and declared a saint in 1984.