|
St. Maximilian Kolbe is the patron saint of prisoners and addicts. In September 1939 the Nazis imprisoned him and forty of his friars after ransacking Niepokalanow and confiscating the friars’ printing equipment. Fr. Kolbe and the friars were released three months later.
In February 1941 Maximilian was imprisoned once again and shortly thereafter was sent to the extermination camp at Auschwitz. At great personal risk, he secretly heard confessions, counseled his fellow inmates, prayed with them and shared his meager food with them.
At the end of July he volunteered to take the place of a prisoner who had been condemned to the starvation bunker. He led his nine companions in the starvation bunker in hymns and prayers as they slowly starved to death. Needing the cell for other prisoners, the Nazis killed him with an injection of carbolic acid on August 14, 1941. Today relatives and friends of prisoners and drug addicts seek St. Maximilian’s intercession on behalf of their loved ones.
|
|
