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The unusually swift canonization of Kolbe was pushed by John Paul and Pope Paul VI. Both men considered Kolbe to be an exemplar of priestly discipline and self-giving, and of Christian virtue in a century of inhumanity. Saints are usually not proclaimed till at least 50 years after the process begins. Kolbe reached beatification, the next-to-last step, in 1971, as Paul VI became the first Pontiff to perform such a ceremony personally. After beatification, the church must normally document two miracles resulting from prayers to the candidate to intercede with God. John Paul removed the need for that by proclaiming Kolbe not only a "confessor" but a martyr, a Christian who died for his faith. As it happened there were several reports of miracles that the Vatican could have investigated.
The son of weavers, Kolbe was renowned in Polish Catholic circles long before his heroic death at Auschwitz. Fiercely devoted to the Virgin Mary, Kolbe, though often gravely ill with tuberculosis, founded a sizable Marian society, and followers started "Maryvilles" in Japan, Brazil and Illinois. Kolbe also created Niepokalanow, which became the world's largest friary. In this self-contained community of 800, the priests and brothers served in every role from fireman to mechanic. Before World War II, the friary's monthly magazine, Knight of the Immaculate, boasted an impressive 1 million circulation. Members of the community also ran a daily newspaper and a radio station.
An articulate opponent of Nazism, Kolbe courageously cared for hundreds of Jewish refugees and was a marked man when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939. In Auschwitz, where priests were singled out for special brutality,Kolbe shared his meager food rations and spent much of his time comforting others. Some survivors said it was Kolbe's counsel that inspired them to go on living. For a new biography of Kolbe, A Man for Others (Harper & Row; $12.95), California Journalist Patricia Treece interviewed Sigmund Gorson, a TV personality in Wilmington, Del., and the only Jewish survivor of Auschwitz who knew Kolbe. Gorson, then a 13-year-old orphan, recalls: "He used to wipe away my tears. Because of the death of my parents, I had been asking, 'Where is God?' and had lost faith. Kolbe gave me that faith back. He was like an angel." —By Richard N. Ostling. Reported by Barry Kalb/Rome