He got a printing press by promising to teach

NAGASAKI, Japan, 1930 AD — No money. Nowhere to sleep. Not one word of Japanese between the five of them.

Less than a month later, a magazine in Japanese came off a press in Nagasaki.

Saint Maximilian Kolbe was thirty-six, and he was a Franciscan friar from Poland. He had joined the Order of St. Francis at sixteen, and taken the name Maximilian. In 1930 AD he landed at Nagasaki with four other friars. Nagasaki is a city in the south of Japan, and it has a long Catholic history.

At home he had built a friary with printing presses in it. Every month it turned out a magazine called the Knight of the Immaculata. He had started that magazine at Krakow in 1922 AD. In the early issues he wrote every word. Now he wanted the same magazine in Japanese.

A statue in a churchyard

The five friars had one place to head for, and that was the cathedral. In the churchyard they found a statue of Our Lady. St. Maximilian Kolbe said: “If we have found her, all goes well.” Tradition holds that Bishop Hayasaka of Nagasaki met them there and made them welcome.

Their first place to sleep was an attic with broken windows and no beds. One winter night the snow blew in and covered them while they lay on the bare boards. The water in their washbowls froze.

The trade

To print a magazine in Japan, St. Maximilian Kolbe needed three things. He needed the bishop’s permission, a licence to print, and a press.

But he had something the bishop wanted. He had studied for years in Rome, and he held the top degree there in two subjects.

So the two of them made a trade. The friar would teach at the bishop’s seminary, which is the school where priests are trained. In exchange, the bishop would let him publish.

The trade got him the press as well as the licence.

The part he could not trade for

He still could not write a word of Japanese, and neither could the four friars with him.

According to longstanding Catholic tradition, he wrote his articles in Latin instead.

Then a man in Nagasaki offered to turn the Latin into Japanese for him. He was a Methodist, so he was not a Catholic.

He liked the articles he was translating so much that he became a Catholic. Then he joined the Militia of the Immaculata, the movement St. Maximilian Kolbe had started in Rome in 1917 AD.

The first Japanese issue came out that year, under the Japanese name Seibo no Kishi (Knight of the Immaculata). Tradition holds that ten thousand copies were printed. The friars had been in the country less than a month.

What happened next

The magazine kept growing. Before long it was printing more than fifty thousand copies.

St. Maximilian Kolbe built his friary on a hillside at Hongōchi. It stood behind a mountain, with its back to the city. He gave it the Japanese name Mugenzai no Sono (the Garden of the Immaculate). Plenty of people in Nagasaki said the spot was a mistake.

Two years after that first issue he was travelling again, through China and India. He was looking for ground for a third friary built around a printing house.