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Maximilian
was born in Poland in the late nineteenth century. At the age
of thirteen he became a Franciscan. He was sent to study in
Rome, and was ordained in 1918. He founded a Christian magazine,
The Knight of the Immaculate, which he ran from a friary just
outside Warsaw. The magazine spawned a community of friars living
in, what they called, “The City of the Immaculate.”
He traveled to Japan to continue his work, and upon returning
to Poland in 1936 found his friary filled with Polish and Jewish
refugees. In 1941, he was sent to Auschwitz because of his magazine's
criticism of the Nazis. He continued to hear confessions in
prison and still performed Mass. When a fellow inmate, with
a wife and chiIdren, was chosen to be starved to death Maximilian
volunteered to die in his place and, after surviving two weeks
without food or water, was killed by lethal injection, thus
his association with drug addicts. He was canonized in 1982
as a “Martyr of Charity,” a new category of saint
initiated by the Vatican Council II. Maximilian is also the
patron of political prisoners. His feast day is August 14. |
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| St.
Maximillian
Patron St. of
Drug Addicts |
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