This month we have a saint of our own times, born near Lodz in Poland in 1894 to a devout couple who worked in the cottage weaving industry. With the Russian Government controlling their lives, the family became impoverished, both parents became Franciscan workers and Maximilian joined a junior seminary, and then entered the order at the age of 16. His parents separated, his mother became a Benedictine lay preacher while his father joined the Franciscan Order, he then ran a bookshop and finally joined a group of patriots fighting the Russians, and as a result was hanged as a traitor in 1914, aged 43.

Maximilian studied at Rome, but returned to Poland after his ordination and taught church history in a seminary. He suffered from T.B. from the age of 25 but was not content to live quietly, preferring to move into the public arena by setting up a Christian magazine, first in Krakow and later moving his successful enterprise to Grozny where, using only priests and lay brothers, he achieved a circulation of 45,000. Plagued by continuous bouts of T.B., he moved back to Warsaw and founded a Franciscan community, (which combined prayer with cheerfulness) and continued to produce newspapers at the same time.

In the mid 30�s, Maximilian went to Nagasaki where he founded another community, but was recalled to Poland in 1936. When his country was invaded by Germany in 1939, he sent most of his friars home as he realised that his monastery would be taken over. The remaining monks were interned for a time, and then freed again and their monastery became a refuge for 3000 Poles and 1500 Jews. The magazine was still being published and was highly critical of the 3rd Reich, so Maximilian was arrested and taken to Auschwitz. Here he continued to minister to his fellow prisoners, conspicuous for his compassion. His final act of sacrifice was to take the place of one of the prisoners selected for death by starvation because of the escape made by some fellow inmates. He died after a month, aged 47. His canonization in 1982, conducted by Pope John Paul, formerly archbishop of Krakow, in which Auschwitz lies, must have been very moving, as the sergeant whose life had been saved attended it