November 2025

An apposite interview to celebrate All Saints! We do not know the precise date it took place but it was not long before the interviewee died, aged 100, on 11 October 2019. He was the oldest Conventual Friar in the world at the time of his death. Our transcription. Speakers' emphases in italics. (Referred to throughout, Niepokalanów monastery, known as the City of the Immaculate Mother of God, was founded in 1927. It is situated 42 kilometres west of Warsaw.)

I Lived With St. Maxmilian Kolbe

So Father, what is your name?

Father Lucjan Krolikowski

So you’re from Poland.

I am from Poland, yes.

And you have the amazing distinction of knowing Father Maximilian Kolbe.

Yes. I stayed in Poland for twenty years, and at that time, for three years I have known Father Maximilian Kolbe. And I met him almost every day.

Okay. Now you met him first in 1937, right?

Yes, when he came from Japan.

So he returned from Japan and that’s the first time you saw him, you were already at Niepokalanów.

This was the first time I saw him, yeah.

What were you doing at Niepokalanów?

At that time, when I saw him, I was a student of the minor seminary, mission seminary, because Father Maximilian Kolbe wanted us all to be missionaries.

And so the seminary he started at Niepokalanów?

Yes. At Niepokalanów. He added to this seminary later. He started with the monastery, and then after maybe a couple of years, two, three years, he founded in the same district of our monastery, there was also the building for seminarians.

So, it’s in the same encampment, basically. The same campus.

Yeah,

And that campus, he also started, right? St Maximilian started that campus as well.

Yes, everything was of his initiative. He did it. [repeats] He did it. His imprint. Everything had his imprint.

And this was … Niepokalanów means, City of the Immaculate.

Yes, the City of the Immaculate, Niepokalanów. In Japan, for instance, he didn’t call the monastery Niepokalanów, in Japanese, but the Garden of the Immaculate.

Beautiful. And then, he started a very large printing apostolate there, that was the largest in Europe.

Oh yes, yeah. One of the largest in Poland, in comparison with other, even civilian [ones]. Grandiose. Beautiful. Seven hundred [men] … those friars they worked for three shifts, day and night. Because we printed not only Knight of the Immaculata [monthly magazine] but many other things. Even in Latin. Miles Immaculatae [six-monthly magazine for priests and pastoral workers]. For the children, also, [a] little Knight of Immaculata.

At the beginning, you see, in Knight of the Immaculata very many articles [were written in Latin]. So I was absorbing them. And, I knew I had the vocation but I didn’t know exactly where I am going to be, where to go. And Father Maximilian already had a place in my heart.

What prompted me to go to Niepokalanów: one day, my uncle, who was a Brother at Niepokalanów, he was in the administration, so he came to Poznań, my city where I lived, with an exhibition, Japanese artifacts, Japanese religious artifacts. And he did not intend to visit my family because he was too busy, with people who came to see the exhibition. But my sister met him, in the street, and invited him home, so then he was obliged to come, to find a few minutes, you see.

So he came, and during our conversations, for the first time I said to my mother, ‘I would like to go to Niepokalanów, to be priest’. And my mother heard this for the first time, that I wanted to be a priest. And she said, ‘I was praying for that, for your vocation.’

Beautiful.

Yeah.

So, you then went to Niepokalanów, straight away?

My uncle went back and prepared the papers, and they sent [them]. So, pretty soon I went to Niepokalanów.

Were people very much proud of what he [St Maximilian] had done?

Oh yes, he was well known all over Poland. I remember many visitors came to see Maximilian Kolbe, not only from Poland but from abroad. And they visited the printing machines. Maximilian had this idea: for the Immaculate, the best; for us, something very simple. Something simple. Poverty. But the printing machines, he went to Germany to find out which is the best one.

That’s pretty impressive.

Yeah, and brought it [back]. I remember, you put, for instance, a roll of paper on one side, and it goes through the machine, you see, and it prints it, and it bends [folds], and clips [staples], and adds in two colours, and prints also the address, and when it comes out, so it’s a ready monthly.

Ready for the mail.

Yeah. So the friars packed it immediately into the sacks and sent it to the railway station. If you would ask me the question, ‘Who is Maximilian Kolbe? There are so many friars, seven hundred, who is Maximilian Kolbe, I would like you to pinpoint him. Select and say, this is Maximilian Kolbe.’ You would indicate the last one. The last. [chuckles] He was so simple. So self-effacing.

What’s the thing you remember most about him? What was an incident that he did or said that really struck you in your mind and stayed there?

Well, when he came to our seminary, very often, he played chess with us. And he would win each time, with anybody, because he had a mathematical [mind] … he was a genius. So, he could play with five or six at the same time and he would [beat] everybody. But sometimes he gave us a chance to win also.

And we used to joke with him. He had, from Japan, a beautiful beard.

Which is a missionary thing, right? Of Franciscans.

Missionary, yes. His beard was totally black, like a coal, black on one side, but red underneath. And we were asking him, ‘Father, how come you got that beard in two colours?’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘there is a story about it. When I was in Japan, one day friars were short of tea. So I told them, don’t bother just bring boiling water and I will do the rest. And when they did it,’ he said, ‘I went and soaked my beard into this boiling water, [and] that part which was above, you see, remained black, and the rest was….’ [laughter] So these were the jokes [he was] giving us many many times.

We could see him in the light of his words, because he had one lung only, in good shape, and the other was … he had pneumonia ... tuberculosis. The other one was also a little bit [dicey]. So he, his voice was very soft. At a distance, to the friars he never spoke without [an] amplifier, microphone. Never without [a] microphone. The friars usually were so eager to listen to his words because his words were beautiful, very deep. They short-handed it. We have many of his sermons and talks, written by the friars who [took it down] in shorthand.

At the beatification of Maximilian Kolbe, I went to Rome. And at our monastery there, I saw a pile of books, lying on the floor, and that high [raising his hand above his head]. Writings of Maximilian Kolbe. He was very prolific. So this is how we knew Maximilian Kolbe, by his writings, and by his works, his deeds.

So he had a very maternal spirit toward his friars that were under him.

Yes. He was strict in the observance of the [rule], but otherwise he was like a mother.

So he was a great organiser. He was able to have his major publications and he was able to keep them all on target, as far as being ready on time.

And then we printed also, a daily – Mały Dziennik, ["Little Daily"] – which was also an object of envy of many other print papers.

So even the secular newspapers were envious of what you did.

Envious, yes, of what he did. And how he spread. They wanted to, not destroy him but, you see, not to go like this.

Right. They’re outdoing them, right? He’s outdoing the civilians.

So what they did, you see, they had people in the post offices, and asked them to slow [down], to [send out] the newspaper from Niepokalanów two days later, so other papers had a chance to be sold. Well, what Maximilian did, was he didn’t fight, he didn’t fight them, but he prepared friars, sent friars to the flying school, [and] turned our football field into an airport [runway]. He wanted to send [his publications] by planes.

That would bypass the post office. [laughs]

Yes. We all say that he prepared Poland, the Polish people for a dark day, for the sufferings during the Second World War.

Cardinal Wyszyński and John Paul the Second were both Marian figures. So they were influenced by St. Maximilian Kolbe. Poland, during Communism, was 95% just Polish, and Catholic. A bloc. So they couldn’t break it, the Communists couldn’t break it, like for instance they broke Czechoslavakia, Rumania, and Hungary. But Poland was resisting.

What about yourself? You were then captured. You were sent to a seminary in eastern Poland, right?

Yes. I was sent to Lvov, which today is in Ukraine, eastern Poland. A large city. Very Polish. But Stalin had another plan. He incorporated eastern Poland into [the] Soviet Union.

Hitler attacked from the West. Stalin attacked from the East.

Seven days later they were supposed to attack both at the same time. But Stalin was suspicious of Hitler, and waited [to see] how he would succeed fighting Poles. When he saw that all the German tanks overran Poland, and we didn’t have much of that equipment, so then he attacked seventeen days later from the east.

So this resulted in you being very separated from St. Maximilian Kolbe and Niepokalanów.

Yes.

…because you had these very big armies basically between you and them. So after being in Niepokalanów and everything working out so well, were you, kind of, scared at that point, having things change so much, and being so far away from home?

No. The Occupation, you see, we knew that people were being arrested during the night and shipped to Siberia, but we never thought, suspected they would take us.

They came to the monastery and said that I have to get a paper, a temporary paper [permit], otherwise they could arrest me in the street if I had nothing, no document with me. So I believed, I really believed, and I went to the police station to get this paper, and at five o’clock in the morning because I wanted to get almost first [in line] and then to return for the philosophy lessons.

And I was only in my pants and my shirt. It was a beautiful time, you see, in June. And I was staying there, almost six or seven hours, waiting. And there were many others waiting also. At one time, a soldier came out, with a rifle, and said, listen, you hamper people [on the street] so please go into the courtyard of the police. When we went into the courtyard, they arrested us.

And so, did your association with St. Maximilian Kolbe help you get through these difficult times? You then went out to Siberia, too, right?

Niepokalanów for me, is like a Credo. A spiritual Credo. I always return to the spirit of Maximilian Kolbe.

Even today?

Even today. When I was studying theology in Beirut, Lebanon, because I was a layman, I [wore] a diocesan seminarian cassock, for four years. And when it came to ordination, I had to choose, either to be under the bishop’s jurisdiction, or a monk. The Jesuits asked me to join them because this was the Jesuit’s university, and there were some Polish Jesuits. But St. Francis and St. Maximilian Kolbe, they drew me back. [laughs] They drew me back. And even my spiritual director, a Jesuit, who was a Jew, told me, this is a good choice, you have to get back to your roots, to St. Francis and St. Maximilian Kolbe. And I didn’t know that Maximilian Kolbe was killed in Auschwitz, at that time.

When did you find out, that?

Oh, maybe when I came to Canada. In [19]47.

He finished high school, college, and applied for the novitiate. So, some lay people, and our priests, you see, they discussed each application, and when it came to Raymond Kolbe – his name was Raymond, not Maximilian, Raymond Kolbe – one of the professors stood up and said: 'It would be a loss for the world to put him in the convent [monastery]. He would be lost for Poland. He would be lost for the world. Because, according to me, he is a genius. A genius in mathematics, genius in physics.’

In 1907 he [had] already [discovered] how to shoot the rocket to the moon; and how much… what kind of thrust [was needed] to shoot it. You see. So he said, ‘I am his professor, I cannot follow his thought. He is so bright. So, he could be another Copernicus. Or Galileo. Or Newton. So it’s better to send him to the university, not to the seminary.’

And our Provincial answered him, and said: ‘I agree, he might be a genius, as you say, in mathematics and physics. But I will tell you, we have, in spirituality, we have geniuses also. And we call them saints.’ [laughs]

And when they discussed the name for the applicant, because of the kind of discussion they had, they chose Maximilianus, ‘the greatest’. You see, Maximilianus, the greatest. So when Maximilian Kolbe got the news that he was named not Raymond but Maximilianus, he said. ‘Hoorah! I want to be the greatest. But in what? In loving people, and loving God.’ You see, two loves. I would bring out these two loves, as his motto of his life.

Well that fits his death, as well because he gave his own life out of love of God and his love of neighbour.

He proved, he proved by giving up his life, that he loved God, and loved neighbour.

What did you think, when you first heard that, as far as the details of his death?

About what?

The fact that he died in place of somebody else.

I wasn’t surprised. [repeats] I wasn’t surprised. Because when he [returned] from Japan, he told the friars that he has been promised Heaven, but don’t ask more. He must have had a vision in Japan, and Our Blessed Virgin Mary told him that he would be in Heaven. So that he wanted to share, he couldn’t stand, you see, to have this secret all alone. So he said to friars, ‘I have been promised Heaven. But don’t ask more. Don’t ask more’ – [about] who told him, [or] where it was.

What would he say today, if he knew what the mass media was doing in regard to materialism and secularism?

He wanted to use all means to evangelise. So that’s why, first he built the radio station, just before the outbreak of the war. And he was thinking of Russia, to send [radio messages] to Russia in the Russian language, because we were very close to the frontier of Russia. He also thought about television, and his printing presses. So everything to spread to evangelise the whole world. And he wanted also to open up Niepokalanów in many parts of the world.

And in Japan, you see, the bishop of Nagasaki told him: ‘I didn’t ask you to come. Why did you come? Go back to Poland.’ And Father Maximilian Kolbe, he didn’t even have money to get back [chuckling], because his superiors, they were afraid that they would not be able to cover all the bills.

And this bishop said, when he was so angry, ‘get out, go back.' He said, 'I am looking only for a professor, but not a missionary. A professor I need for my seminary. A professor of philosophy and theology.’

And Maximilian Kolbe said, ‘I have those two doctorates.’ [laughing]

So, he asked him to stay. And in a month, from landing in Japan, Maximilian Kolbe printed the first monthly in Japanese – in Japanese, the Miles Immaculatae. So he organised, he asked the pagans, to translate from Latin, because he was writing articles in Latin, and the Japanese, clever men, you see, they translated into Japanese. These people were pagans. [laughter] So you can see that they had a saint.

Knowing that the Church is not doing so well as far as attendance, and maybe as far as [having] as good an image as it ought to in the world, what would he say, as far as how to remedy the problem?

He would say that we have to be holy. You see this is the only way to spread the Gospel, by being holy. No other way. Even the printing presses and all other means. No. But us humans, we have to be holy.

So all the printing presses in the world won’t do it, all the organisation won’t do it, it has to be the holiness, and from there organisation and the printing presses will do fine.

Yeah. Yeah. This is the only way. And holiness is the only sense of our being on this earth. Nothing else. If we don’t get holy, we don’t want to be holy, so our life is spurious, you see. Nothing. It’s nul. It’s zero. It’s complete failure. We are created by God with love, and love is holiness, to be holy, and He created us to love, and to be holy. Like Him. [repeats] Like Him. And we are His children, and we have to be holy. Otherwise, if we are not holy, we don’t have a ticket to Heaven, to the Kingdom of Heaven. We have to be holy.

That’s beautiful.

He thought, you see, that Mary, as she is also human, and knows our predicament, and knows our situation on earth, and the shortest way to her Son is by taking her hand, you see, and ask her to bring us to Jesus. So that’s why his Mariology is so deep, so developed, because he believed that Our Lady will bring us to Our Lord. And he knew also about this prediction, what God said to the devil, at the beginning of our history, that Mary will conquer him, the devil. He converted many people in his life. Many people. He was not afraid.

Our Lady appeared before the Revolution in Russia started. But Maximilian Kolbe didn’t speak about Fatima because it was not yet approved by the Holy See. And he was very obedient. Very obedient.

Do you have a devotion today to St. Maximilian Kolbe? Do you pray to him?

Oh yes. Every day, after the Mass, I say the dedication to the Blessed Virgin Mary according to St. Maximlian Kolbe.