By Isabel Orellana Vilches
Maximilian Kolbe trusted the Immaculate. A “Franciscan, martyr of charity, he offered himself as victim in the Auschwitz concentration camp to save a father of a family. He had founded the Militia and the City of the Immaculate.”
John Paul II said that Maximilian “did as Jesus had: he didn’t suffer death but gave his life.” Shortly before the invasion of Poland, the Saint had written: “To suffer, work and die as knights, not with a normal death but, for example, with a bullet in the head, sealing our love for the Immaculate, shedding our blood, as a genuine knight, up to the last drop, to hasten the conquest of the whole world for Her. I know nothing more sublime.” God took him at his word.