He was born on 8 January 1894 in occupied Poland: he joined the Conventual Franciscans in Lwów in 1910, and was ordained eight years later, as his country became free and independent for the first time in over 120 years. He believed that the world was passing through a time of intense spiritual crisis, and that Christians must fight for the world’s salvation with all the means of modern communication. He founded a newspaper, and a sodality called the Knights of Mary Immaculate, which spread widely both in Poland and abroad.
In 1927 he founded a community, a “city of Mary,” at Teresin: centred round the Franciscan friary, it attracted many lay people, and became self-supporting, publishing many periodicals and running its own radio station. In 1930 he went to Japan, studied Buddhism and Shintoism, and through the Japanese edition of his newspaper spread the Christian message in a way that was in harmony with Japanese culture. In Nagasaki, he set up a “Garden of the Immaculate,” which survived the atomic bomb. He also travelled to Malabar and to Moscow, but was recalled to Poland in 1936 for reasons of health.
When the Germans invaded in 1939, the community at Teresin sheltered thousands of refugees, most of them Jews. In 1941 he was arrested and sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz, where he helped and succoured the inmates. In August of that year a prisoner escaped, and in reprisal the authorities were choosing ten people to die by starvation. One of the men had a family, and Maximilian Kolbe offered to take his place. The offer was accepted, and he spent his last days comforting his fellow prisoners. The man he saved was present at his canonisation.
Maximilian Kolbe’s martyrdom is the least important thing about him. We are none of us likely to find ourselves in a position to emulate his sacrifice, and speculation as to the heroic way in which we would have behaved in his place is a pernicious waste of time. What is important is that he acted the way he did because of who he was – or, rather, because of who he had become. It is because of who he had become that we revere him as a saint: he would have been a saint (though perhaps not canonised) even if he had not been martyred. And that process of becoming is something we can all emulate. We can all become people for whom doing the right thing is obvious, natural, and easy. It requires no heroism, no special gifts: just perseverance, and prayer.
Talking about the right thing: Mexico is a nation where affluence, poverty, natural splendour and urban blight rub shoulders. Its politics were dominated for 70 years by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. But elections in 1997 saw a resurgent opposition break what was in effect a one-party system with a democratic facade. Elections in 2000 confirmed the trend when Vicente Fox became the first president to come from the opposition.
Mexico is a major oil producer and exporter. Though production has fallen in the last few years, about one-third of government revenue still comes from the industry. Much of the crude is bought by the US. But prosperity remains a dream for most Mexicans. Rural areas are often neglected and huge shanty towns ring the cities.
Many poor Mexicans try to cross the 1,864 mile border with the US in search of a job, and more than a million are arrested every year. Hundreds die of heat exhaustion or thirst while making the attempt, and the exodus has led to some towns and villages in Mexico being virtually empty of able-bodied men.
The Mexican economy is heavily dependent on the money sent home by the millions of migrant workers in the US, and so it has been hit hard by the downturn in its neighbour's economy. Another persistent issue has been the pressure for greater rights for Mexico's indigenous people. A law passed in 2001 fell short of giving Mexico's Indians political autonomy. However, demands for indigenous rights have been largely peaceful since 1994, when at least 150 people died during an uprising in the southern state of Chiapas, led by the Zapatista rebel movement.
Violent crime is a major concern; Mexico has one of the highest rates of kidnappings in the world. Turf wars between rival drug cartels are said to lie behind many gangland killings. All along the boarder with the USA.
No comments:
Post a Comment