Maximilian Kolbe

Saint Maximilian Kolbe is the patron of drug addicts and of all prisoners — especially political prisoners — because of how he died: at Auschwitz he stepped out of the ranks to take the place of a condemned stranger, a father of a family, and was locked in the starvation bunker, where he sustained the other condemned men in prayer until he was killed by an injection of carbolic acid. Those bound by addiction, who feel themselves in chains and condemned, look to the man who walked freely into a death cell; political prisoners, to the prisoner who kept his liberty of soul behind the wire. He is patron of journalists, publishers, and broadcasters because in life he was a pioneer of the Catholic press and radio, founding magazines and a religious city devoted to evangelizing through modern media. He is also venerated as a patron of Poland.