Doctors give him three months; seven friars join his movement

KRAKÓW, Poland, October 7, 1919 AD — In the autumn of 1919 AD, Saint Maximilian Kolbe was twenty-five years old. His doctors had given him three months to live at the most. He had started a movement for the Virgin Mary. He wanted the Franciscan friars he lived with in Kraków to join it.

A banner in Rome

In 1917 AD, St. Maximilian was a student friar in Rome. That year, processions marched through the city to mark two hundred years of the Freemasons. One of their banners read: “Satan will reign in the Vatican and the Pope will be his servant.” On October 16, 1917 AD, he and six other friars started the Militia of the Immaculata. St. Maximilian wrote its rules. It set out to convert everyone living in sin and everyone who had broken away from the Church. It aimed at the Freemasons most of all.

Every member was to give himself wholly to the Virgin Mary. Every member was also to carry or wear the Miraculous Medal. The Militia’s prayer asks Mary to pray for the people who turn to her, and for those who don’t. Members were asked to say it once a day if they could: “O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you, and for all who do not have recourse to you especially for the Freemasons.” In March of 1919 AD, Pope Benedict XV gave the Militia his blessing.

That summer St. Maximilian came home to Poland, where people were poor and many were going hungry. He lived in the friary next to the church of St. Francis of Assisi in Kraków. There he started teaching the friars who were studying to be priests.

St. Maximilian had brought an illness called tuberculosis home from Rome. Now the doctors found it had gone very far. One of his lungs had collapsed, and the other was damaged. His superiors took him off teaching. All they left him was hearing confessions and preaching a few sermons.

The friars who laughed

Many of the friars St. Maximilian lived with ignored his efforts to start the Militia among them. Some argued against it, and some laughed at it. He found the way they treated it harder to bear than being sick.

Then came the evening of October 7, the feast of the Holy Rosary. During recreation, the friars’ free time, six friars wrote their names in a book. It was going to be the Militia’s list of members in Kraków. The six were students for the priesthood, in the same house where the Militia had been laughed at. Father Keller, the priest who trained them, signed with them. The seven were the first group anywhere outside Italy to join.

From that evening the Militia grew. Still sick, St. Maximilian set up meetings and talks. He started groups for the Virgin Mary called Marian circles. They spread quickly all over Kraków, into family homes and other groups.