NIEPOKALANÓW (Immaculateum, City of the Immaculate). - A distinctive monastic city of Poland, 42 km. from Warsaw, founded by Fr. Maximilian Kolbe in 1927. It covers over 35 hectares and has about 400 inhabitants (785 in 1939), all Conventual Franciscan friars minor, priests, clerics, and especially lay brothers.
Its origin is due to the realization of a great ideal. Having founded the Militia of the Immaculate (v.) in Rome (17 Oct. 1917), Fr. Kolbe thought that every country should have its own "City of the Immaculate," where the Knight of the Immaculate, the magazine of the Pious Union, would be printed and distributed in millions of copies. N. was the first of these cities. It was begun in 1897 and completed in 1939; it comprises 112 buildings (dwellings, printing house, Marian publishing house, workshop, post office, radio transmitting station, airfield, fire brigade, etc.) and publishes about ten magazines and newspapers, among them the Rycerz Niepokalanej (Knight of the Immaculate), which rose from an initial 60,000 copies to 730,000 in 1934 and to a million in 1939; the Rycerzyk
Niepokalanej (Little Knight of the Immaculate) for children, from 1933, with 165,000 monthly copies; the Maly Dziennik (Little Journal), a Catholic political and religious daily among the most widely circulated in Poland, from 1935, with 150-250,000 copies on weekdays and feast days.
But the war came (1939-45), and these, like the other departments, were hard hit. Since 1945 N. has been reorganizing its departments and sections, but its apostolate is made difficult. In recent years the following have distinguished themselves: the editorial staff, with the resumption of the Knight (July 1945; 650,000 monthly copies in 1947-48, now reduced to 80,000 by the communist government, which on 18 May 1949 deprived N. of all its printing machinery); the cultural section, with the restoration of the Library, and the Center for Marian Studies, with the establishment of a Museum of Antiquities and the opening of a Gymnasium attended by 250 external pupils; the charitable-assistance section, with the collection and distribution of food, clothing and various goods to the poor of the whole region; the fire brigade section, to which the same communist government in 1947, for the 15th anniversary of the establishment of the corps, gave national recognition, awarding gold, silver and bronze medals to 10 friar firemen; the building department, whose religious built in 1948-50 a great votive temple to the Immaculate Mediatrix of all graces (62 x 18 m. and 16 in height; tower 50 m. with the Cross); the most beautiful monument of N.