Saint Maximillian Mary Kolbe

(1894 - 1941)

Patron Saint Against Drug Addiction

Our Lady appeared to Saint Maximillian Mary Kolbe and showed Saint Maximillian Mary Kolbe two crowns; one white representing purity, and one red representing martyrdom.  Our Lady asked Saint Maximillian Mary Kolbe if he wanted them, and he replied, "Yes."

At 16, Saint Maximillian Mary Kolbe entered the Franciscan monastery in Lviv, which is now in the Ukraine, but was a part of Poland at that time, and he was ordained a priest at age 24.  In 1939, the Nazis conquered Poland and arrested Saint Maximillian Mary Kolbe and his friars releasing them on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

In 1941, Saint Maximillian Mary Kolbe was again arrested by the Nazis and this time was sent to Auschwitz for three months where he was severely beaten. 

A prisoner escaped from Auschwitz, and the commandant announced that ten prisioners would die as punishment for the escaped prisoner.  Saint Maximillian Mary Kolbe, Number 16670, was not selected to die by the commandant but stepped forward and asked to take the place of a man who had a wife and children.  The commandant agreed to the exchange.

Saint Maximillian Mary Kolbe and the other nine were placed on death block without clothes and in the dark, for the slow and painful death of starvation.  One by one the prisoners died, but when four remained, including Saint Maximillian Mary Kolbe, who had almost no flesh on his bones, the jailer appeared with a hypodermic needle filled with carbolic acid which is an alcoholic, corrosive, poison used in insecticides.  For this reason, Saint Maximillian Mary Kolbe is known as the Patron Saint Against Drug Addiction. 

Saint Maximillian Mary Kolbe was beatified in 1971 and canonized in 1982.

Saint Maximillian Mary Kolbe feast day is August 14.