KOLBE, MAKSYMILIAN MARIA. - Marian writer and apostle, of the Conventual Friars Minor, b. at Pabjanica, in Poland, on 6 Jan. 1894, d. at Oświęcim, there, on 14 Aug. 1941, in the fame of sanctity. He studied in Rome (1912-19), earning a degree in philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University (1915) and in theology at the Theological Faculty of St. Bonaventure at the international Seraphic College of the Order (1919).
There, on the advice of his rector, Fr. Stefano Ignadi (v.), on 17 Oct. 1917 he founded, together with six other confreres, the "Militia of the Immaculata" (v.), more a union of perfect devotion and of Catholic-Marian apostolate widely spread throughout the world (ca. 2,100,000 enrolled). A priest on 28 Apr. 1918, he taught theology for some years in Poland, beginning in 1922 his fruitful press-apostolate, with the magazine Rycerz Niepokalanów ("The Knight of the Immaculata") at Kraków, then Grodno (1923) and in 1927 at Niepokalanów ("City of the Immaculata," 40 km. from Warsaw).
In March 1930, with a special blessing from Pius XI, he went to Japan, founding near Nagasaki, in the following May, the second city or "Garden of the Immaculata" (Mugenzai-no-Sono), with the Marian-missionary bulletin in the Japanese language, much circulated, Seibo-no-Kishi. The analogous Marian-missionary foundations prepared in China, Korea and India remained in project, owing to extrinsic difficulties. From 1936 to 1939 he was again superior and director at Niepokalanów, which in 1938 housed 762 Conventual religious, known as the largest religious community in the world. Much known in Poland, during the last war he was deported a first time to Germany (19 Sept. - 8 Dec. 1939) and then definitively on 17 Febr. 1941, traversing his sorrowful calvary from the prisons of Pawiak in Warsaw to the camp of Oświęcim (28 May), where toward the end of July he offered his life evangelically to save that of a father of a family condemned in reprisal, with nine other prisoners, to death by starvation in the famous German "bunker": his death cell is today a destination for pilgrimages. In 1948 the informative processes for his beatification were begun.
Bibliography4 works
M. K., Niepokalanów 1948; M. Winowska, Le fou de Notre Dame, Paris 1948; C. Dobraczynski, Cantano nei vatteranei di Oświęcim, Brescia 1949; F. M. Rossetti, Cavalleria mariana, Padua 1949; B. De Wit, P. Max K., Ridder der Oubelekte, Roermond 1950; various authors, Le père K., special issue of the journal Marie, 4 (1950), pp. 1-71.
Lorenzo Di Fonzo