“I am a Catholic priest.” With this statement, we have in just a few words the “ID card” of St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan priest martyred at Auschwitz August 14, 1941, seventy years ago. When the fierce Lagerführer Karl Fritzsch, in reprisal for the escape...
In the concentration and death camp of Auschwitz, he voluntarily immolated himself, taking the place of a father who had been condemned to die of starvation in the terrible “death bunker.” The death of St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe as a martyr of charity was a death of...
The heart of the “City of the Immaculate” was the chapel with the Blessed Sacrament. St. Maximilian introduced Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration at Niepokalanow and assigned turns of adoration to each of the nearly 800 friars. Despite their feverish...
