During the weekend of February 13-15, 2016, the St. Maximilian Kolbe Relic tour will stop at St. Clement Mary Hofbauer Church, for the last stop in the Baltimore area. After that, it will travel to Washington D.C., to our ministry at The Catholic University of America, February 17-21, 2016. As Fr. Vincent Gluc, OFM Conv., pastor of St. Clement Mary Hofbauer Church wrote in the February 7th parish bulletin: St. Maximilian Kolbe, OFM Conv. was “Franciscan saint who volunteered to die, taking the place of another man, who was scheduled to be put to death in a concentration camp in Poland. Saint Maximilian Kolbe died by lethal injection on August 14, 1941. We are marking the 75th anniversary of his death this year. Please join us for a special Evening Prayer in honor of St. Maximilian Kolbe scheduled for Monday, February 15 at 7:00 pm in the Church. The theme of our celebration is: ‘St. Maximilian Kolbe, OFM Conv.: Martyr of Charity and Saint for our Difficult Times.‘” Please feel free to join Friar Vincent and the parish community of St. Clement Mary Hofbauer for veneration on February 15th.
More information from prior posts about the Relic Tour:
To commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the martyrdom of St. Maximilian Kolbe (a friar of our Order of Friars Minor Conventual who died in the World War II concentration camp in Auschwitz, Poland) our friars of Our Lady of the Angels Province have sponsored a pilgrimage of St. Maximilian’s relics (consisting of fragments of his beard). This is the largest tour of St. Maximilian Kolbe relics in the United States. It began on January 15, 2016 with an Opening Mass celebrated by our Minister Provincial, the Very Reverend Fr. James McCurry, OFM Conv., followed by veneration, held the Shrine of St. Anthony in Ellicott City, Maryland. The tour will include 38 ministry sites along the East Coast of the United States and Canada. The pilgrimage of St. Maximilian’s relics will return to our Ellicott City, MD ministry at the Shrine of St. Anthony for a concluding Closing Ceremony, on St. Maximilian’s feast day, August 14th.
