Scottish Catholic Observer

They will be venerated in the north eastern diocese from Friday January 20 to Sunday January 22, with opportunities to view the relics at Aberdeen University chapel, Pluscarden Abbey and St Mary’s Cathedral, Aberdeen.

In 1941, St Maximilian Kolbe demonstrated heroic charity by giving his life in place of a fellow prisoner at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Franciszek Gajowniczek was a husband and father who was one of ten men chosen to suffer death by starvation after being subjected to hours of standing in the hot summer sun, a punishment for one prisoner’s successful escape. The man’s cry of despair—’What will become of my family?’—moved St Maximilian to step forward and ask to be taken instead. Canonised October 10, 1982, St Maximilian Kolbe was declared the ‘Patron Saint of our difficult century,’ and a Martyr of Charity, by Pope St John Paul II.

On Friday January 20 there will be a celebration at King’s College Chapel, Aberdeen University in honour of the saint with Mass followed by veneration of his Relics. The next day there will be Mass at Pluscarden Abbey in the morning before attendees travel to St Mary’s Cathedral in Aberdeen. On the Sunday, Masses in English and Polish will take place at the cathedral as well as further veneration of the relics.

The relics include a large silver and bronze reliquary holding the strands from Maximilian’s beard in a glass case. The design is described as ‘quite unique and designed to include important symbols’ from the saint’s life. The base is shaped like Poland, the place of his birth and where his vocation and work first flourished. ‘Thorns’ grow from this Poland symbolising the occupation by the Third Reich and also the Auschwitz concentration camps. But from the thorns grow a lily symbolising purity and a tulip symbolising martyrdom. The flowers tell how God made him blossom like a lily, while both flowers symbolise his love being victorious over hate. The glass case holding the strands from his beard is encircled by a Franciscan cord with its traditional three knots for the three Franciscan vows. It symbolises his vocation.

Last year was the 75th anniversary of the saint’s death and to commemorate this historic anniversary, his relics are touring the world. He is the patron saint of drug addicts, political prisoners, families, journalists, prisoners, and the pro-life.

—[email protected]

—This story ran in full in the January 6 edition print of the SCO, available in parishes.