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brief · LWÓW, Austrian Galicia, September 4, 1910 AD

At sixteen, St. Maximilian Kolbe takes the habit and a new name

Edition of

Saint Maximilian Kolbe
A black-and-white group photograph of several dozen Conventual Franciscan friars in habits, seated and standing in rows under a vine-covered pergola, with a seated prelate in white choir dress at the center of the front row.
Franciscan students and professors of the Pontifical International Seraphic College in Rome, photographed with a visiting prelate in the college garden in 1912 — the college St. Maximilian Kolbe was sent to two years after taking the habit at Lwów.

LWÓW, Austrian Galicia, September 4, 1910 AD — Saint Maximilian Kolbe, sixteen, received the habit of the Friars Minor Conventual here this week, at the foot of the altar of the Immaculate Virgin. He came in as Rajmund Kolbe.

He and his elder brother, Franciszek Kolbe, came here in October 1907 from Pabianice, some 500 km away in Russian Poland. There have been no friaries in Russian Poland since 1863. The two boys crossed into Austrian Galicia dressed as farmers.

Earlier this year he decided to leave the order for a soldier’s life. He was walking to the Father Provincial’s office to say so when the parlour bell rang: his mother, Maria Dąbrowska Kolbe, had come unannounced. The two brothers asked for the habit instead.

He chose Maximilian, a name that has belonged to brave soldiers and to rulers.

A year of novitiate follows: shared prayer, work, poverty and penance. It closes with simple vows.

About this story

Catholic Saints News tells the lives of the saints as news from their own time and place. This story was written with AI from the historical record, and we read and approved it before it ran.

The Saints' words. This newspaper will never make a saint say something the historical record does not preserve.

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Image. Rzym, Międzynarodowe Kolegium Serafickie - klerycy-studenci i profesorzy, photographer unknown, 1912, Archiwum Niepokalanowa (catalogue arch-01-0062) — see the original.

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More on this saint

Black-and-white studio portrait of a young man with short dark hair and round wire-rimmed glasses, wearing a dark high-collared habit against a pale background.

Six student friars and the priest who trains them joined a movement Saint Maximilian Kolbe founded for people who give themselves wholly to the Virgin Mary. They signed the membership book of the Militia of the Immaculata at the Franciscan friary in Kraków on the feast of the Holy Rosary, the first members outside Italy. St. Maximilian, twenty-five and newly home from Rome, is gravely ill with tuberculosis.

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