Skip to content

September 1 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

event · NIEPOKALANÓW, Poland, September 1, 1939 AD

Germany invades Poland, and a friary's daily newspaper stops

The Franciscan friary west of Warsaw that prints one of Poland's largest daily papers stopped sending out today's edition on the first day of the war.

A black-and-white photograph of a bearded friar in a habit, hat in hand, greeted by a crowd of Franciscan friars and boys beside a car parked outside the friary. — Friars crowd around St. Maximilian Kolbe as he returns to Niepokalanów, Teresin, Poland, in 1936 AD.

German forces crossed into Poland before dawn today, and by mid-afternoon bombers were passing over the Franciscan friary at Niepokalanów, about forty kilometres west of Warsaw. The friary's record of the first day of the war is a single line: the dispatch of its daily newspaper was stopped. Its superior, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, knows that a paper of that size has already irritated the German police.

A black-and-white photograph of a bearded, bespectacled Franciscan friar in a dark habit, seated on the grass and holding an enamel cup, surrounded by a group of firemen in metal helmets and dark uniforms, with a field and trees in the background.

place · NIEPOKALANÓW, Poland, September 1, 1939 AD

A friary of 762 runs Poland's largest printing works

Niepokalanów, a Franciscan friary west of Warsaw, houses 762 people and runs the largest printing works in Central Europe. Saint Maximilian Kolbe founded it on donated farmland in 1927 AD and has been its superior since 1936 AD. Its presses print a monthly magazine that reached a million copies last December and a daily paper selling about 137,000 copies on weekdays; the dispatch of that daily was stopped today.

3 min read

More in this edition

Black-and-white photograph of a young Carmelite nun in habit and white cloak, standing in a brick cloister courtyard, holding a folded paper manuscript against her chest.

writings · LISIEUX, Normandy, September 1896 AD

'My vocation is love': St. Thérèse writes her answer at Lisieux

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, a Carmelite nun of twenty-three, has spent part of this month on retreat writing a few pages for her eldest sister, who asked her to set down what she had been saying about her way. Working through St. Paul's teaching that the Church is a body with a heart, St. Thérèse wrote that she had found her own place in it: "My vocation is love." Pope John Paul II read that passage aloud in 1997 AD when he proclaimed her a Doctor of the Church.

5 min read

A clean-shaven man in a black wool gown sits behind a bench in a panelled City chamber, one hand flat on an open parchment roll, an inkhorn, quill knife, coins, a clasped book and a black flat cap on the table before him, with a hooded man and a clerk behind. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of an oil and tempera panel by Hans Holbein the Younger, from the paper's reference portrait based on Portrait of Sir Thomas More (Hans Holbein the Younger, 1527, The Frick Collection, New York, acc. 1912.1.77) View source artwork.

profile · CITY OF LONDON, September 3, 1510 AD

London makes St. Thomas More judge of its everyday quarrels

The Common Council of London has made Saint Thomas More one of the two officers who sit in the sheriff's place as judge over the civil suits Londoners bring against one another. He is thirty-two, a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, and the court sits on Thursday mornings at the Compter in the Poultry, off Cheapside. In the same year the printer Wynkyn de Worde has brought out his English translation of the life of an Italian nobleman and scholar.

4 min read

A black-and-white head-and-shoulders photograph of a young bearded friar in a hooded habit, standing against a rough plastered wall and looking levelly at the camera.

interview · SAN GIOVANNI ROTONDO, Apulia, September 4, 1916 AD

An hour with St. Pio in his cell at San Giovanni Rotondo

Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, a Capuchin priest of twenty-nine, has been allowed back to the friary of Santa Maria delle Grazie on the mountain above the town of San Giovanni Rotondo. For six years his health, and then the army, kept him out of any friary: he lived in his father's house and prayed in a hut he had built in the garden. He talks about those years, about the letters he answers, and about what he asked his superior for in August.

4 min read

A dark seventeenth-century painted interior: a large handwritten register lies open on a heavy wooden table beside a quill, inkwell and burning candle, with a plain wooden crucifix on the whitewashed wall, carved choir stalls in shadow and a twig broom leaning at the right. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of a seventeenth-century viceregal Lima oil painting on canvas, from the paper's reference portrait based on Retrato de San Martín de Porres (Anonymous, Lima school, 17th century, Monasterio de Santa Rosa de las Monjas, Lima) View source artwork.

legacy · PERU, 1641 AD

Peru's Dominicans write St. Martin de Porres into their official record

The Dominican friars of Peru, meeting in their provincial chapter, have voted a formal entry in praise of Saint Martin de Porres, a lay member of the convent of Our Lady of the Rosary at Lima who died there two years ago. The entry goes into the acts of the province, the book that carries its law and its permanent record. No church inquiry into his life and miracles has been opened.

Today in the Church

Tuesday of the 22nd week in Ordinary Time

On this day in the Church

1939 German forces crossed into Poland, and the presses of the Franciscan friary at Niepokalanów, which printed one of the country's largest daily newspapers under St. Maximilian Kolbe, stopped.Our report Source
2025 Pope Leo XIV said the Mass opening the Augustinians' 188th general chapter in the Roman basilica where the relics of St. Monica rest, telling the seventy-three delegates to come with listening, humility and unity.Our report Source

Quote of the day

“I come only to cure you.”

— St. Martin de Porres, to a patient in the convent of Our Lady of the Rosary, Lima, José Manuel Valdés, Vida admirable del bienaventurado fray Martín de Porres (Lima, 1863), cap. V