1. Maximilian Kolbe had been active in promoting the veneration of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, founding and supervising the monastery of Niepokalanow near Warsaw, operating an amateur-radio station, and founding or running several other organizations and publications.
On 10 October 1982, Pope John Paul II canonized Kolbe and declared him a martyr of charity.
Raymund Maximilian Kolbe was born on 8 January 1894 in Zdunska Wola, in the Kingdom of Poland, which was then part of the Russian Empire.
Maximilian Kolbe was the second son of weaver Julius Kolbe and midwife Maria Dabrowska.
Maximilian Kolbe's father was an ethnic German, and his mother was Polish.
Maximilian Kolbe had four brothers, two of whom died of tuberculosis.
Maximilian Kolbe's life was strongly influenced in 1903, when he was 9, by a vision of the Virgin Mary.
Maximilian Kolbe asked me if I was willing to accept either of these crowns.
In 1910, Kolbe was allowed to enter the novitiate, where he chose a religious name Maximilian.
Maximilian Kolbe professed his first vows in 1911, and final vows in 1914, adopting the additional name of Maria.
Maximilian Kolbe was sent to Rome in 1912, where he attended the Pontifical Gregorian University.
Maximilian Kolbe earned a doctorate in philosophy in 1915 there.
Maximilian Kolbe was active in the consecration and entrustment to Mary.
Julius Kolbe was caught and hanged as a traitor by the Russians at the age of 43, a traumatic event for young Maximilian.
Maximilian Kolbe wanted the entire Franciscan Order consecrated to the Immaculate by an additional vow.
Maximilian Kolbe was active in promoting the veneration of the Immaculate Virgin Mary.
In January 1922, Maximilian Kolbe founded the monthly periodical Rycerz Niepokalanej, a devotional publication based on the French Le Messager du Coeur de Jesus.
Between 1930 and 1936, Maximilian Kolbe undertook a series of missions to East Asia.
Maximilian Kolbe arrived first in Shanghai, China, but failed to gather a following there.
Maximilian Kolbe was persuaded to work in Japan by a group of Japanese students he encountered in Europe, who lamented the need for missionaries in their home country.
In mid-1932, Maximilian Kolbe left Japan for Malabar, India, where he founded another monastery, which has since closed.
Maximilian Kolbe returned to Poland in 1933 for a general chapter of the order in Krakow.
Maximilian Kolbe returned to Japan and remained there until called back to attend the Provincial Chapter in Poland in 1936.
Maximilian Kolbe held an amateur radio licence, with the call sign SP3RN.
Maximilian Kolbe refused to sign the Deutsche Volksliste, which would have given him rights similar to those of German citizens in exchange for recognizing his ethnic German ancestry.
Maximilian Kolbe received permission to continue publishing religious works, though significantly reduced in scope.
Maximilian Kolbe is said to have raised his left arm and calmly waited for the deadly injection.
The cause for Maximilian Kolbe's beatification was opened at a local level on 3 June 1952.
On 12 May 1955 Maximilian Kolbe was recognized by the Holy See as a Servant of God.
Maximilian Kolbe was declared venerable by Pope Paul VI on 30 January 1969, beatified as a Confessor of the Faith by the same Pope in 1971, and canonized as a saint by Pope John Paul II on 10 October 1982.
Franciszek Gajowniczek, the man Maximilian Kolbe saved at Auschwitz, survived the Holocaust and was present as a guest at both the beatification and the canonization ceremonies.
Maximilian Kolbe is one of ten 20th-century martyrs who are depicted in statues above the Great West Door of Anglican Westminster Abbey, London.
Pope Paul VI recognized this distinction at Maximilian Kolbe's beatification, naming him a Confessor and giving him the unofficial title "martyr of charity".
John Paul II wanted to make the point that the Nazis' systematic hatred of whole categories of humanity was inherently a hatred of religious faith; he said that Maximilian Kolbe's death equated to earlier examples of religious martyrdom.
Maximilian Kolbe's alleged antisemitism was a source of controversy in the 1980s in the aftermath of his canonization.
Maximilian Kolbe influenced his own Order of Conventual Franciscan friars, as the Militia Immaculatae movement had continued.
Maximilian Kolbe composed the Immaculata prayer as a prayer of consecration to the Immaculata.