August 14th St Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941)

Born near Lodz in Poland he was drawn to the Franciscan Order of which his parents were Tertiaries (his father joined the Polish patriots in the 1st World War and was hanged by the Russians). Maximilian studied in Rome and was ordained in 1919, though his career was bedevilled by tuberculosis. Realising the need for effective Christian teaching through publishing, he set up presses operated by lay brothers at Niepokalanow, near Warsaw. The community there eventually numbered no less than 762 friars. In the early 30s Maximilian worked in Japan founding a community in Nagasaki. After the German invasion of Poland, the friars community there was initially dispersed but then reformed as a refugee camp for Polish Christians and Jews. Maximilian was arrested as a "journalist, publisher and intellectual and sent to Auschwitz in May 1941 where he continued his priestly ministry discreetly, hearing many confessions and smuggling in bread and wine for Mass. If anybody escaped, others from the same bunker were chosen to be starved to death. When this fate was about to befall a married sergeant with children, Francis Gajowniczek, Maximilian offered to take his place. He prepared all the prisoners in the death cell No. 18; by August l4th only four were still alive, and Maximilian was given a fatal injection. He was canonised in 1982, when the man whose life he saved was still living, and able to attend the ceremony in Rome.