NIEPOKALANÓW (Immaculateum, CITY OF THE IMMACULATE). – A characteristic monastic city of Poland, 42 km from Warsaw, founded by Fr. Massimiliano Kolbe in 1927. It covers an area of more than 35 hectares and has approximately 400 inhabitants (785 in 1939), all Conventual Friars Minor—priests, clerics, and especially lay brothers.
Its origin is connected with the realization of a great ideal. After founding the Militia of the Immaculate (v.) in Rome (17 October 1917), Fr. Kolbe conceived the idea that every country should have its own «City of the Immaculate», where the Knight of the Immaculate, the periodical of the Pious Union, could 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, a printing press, a Marian publishing house, workshops, a post office, a transmitting radio station, an airfield, a fire brigade, etc.) and publishes about ten magazines and newspapers, including Rycerz Niepokalanej (Knight of the Immaculate), which rose from an initial circulation of 60,000 copies to 730,000 in 1934 and one million in 1939; Rycerzyk
Niepokalanej (Little Knight of the Immaculate) for children, published since 1933, with a monthly circulation of 165,000; and Maly Dziennik (Little Journal), a Catholic political and religious daily, among the most widely circulated in Poland, published since 1935, with 150,000–250,000 copies on weekdays and feast days.
Then came the war (1939–45), and these departments, like the others, were severely affected. Since 1945 N. has been reorganizing its departments and sections, but its apostolate has been made difficult. In recent years, the editorial office has distinguished itself through 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, through the restoration of the Library, and the Marian Studies Centre, through the establishment of a Museum of Antiquities and the opening of a Gymnasium attended by 250 external pupils; the charitable and welfare section, through the collection and distribution of food, clothing, and various goods to the poor throughout the region; the fire brigade section, which the same Communist government in 1947, on the 15th anniversary of the establishment of the corps, gave national recognition by awarding gold, silver, and bronze medals to ten friar firefighters; the building department, whose religious members constructed in 1948–50 a large votive church dedicated to the Immaculate Mediatrix of All Graces (62 m × 18 m and 16 m high; tower 50 m high with the Cross); the finest monument of N.