BlackFriars Volume III, Issue III | Page 2

Letter from the Director Dear Friend, This past July I had the great privilege along with with eight other Dominican friars from the Province of St. Joseph - of leading a pilgrimage for the College Knights of Columbus and the Sisters of Life in the lead up to World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland, where we ran an at-capacity arena filled with 20,000 young people deepening their faith. We followed in the footsteps of two great Saints who championed the Gospel of Jesus Christ against the ideologies of their day. At Auschwitz, we sought the intercession of St. Maximillian Kolbe, the great promoter of devotion to the 0300_BlackFriars_VF.indd 2 Immaculate Heart of Mary, who hid 2,000 Jews from persecution before being taken to Auschwitz himself. On the site where we prayed, Fr. Kolbe gave his own life in place of another prisoner who had been sentenced to death. We also visited the Saint John Paul II Sanctuary, originally the site of the Zakrzowek rock quarry, where a young Karol Wojtyła was forced to work during the five-year Nazi occupation of Poland while secretly studying at an underground “...the Dominican Friars are committed to preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ against the false ideologies of our own time.” 9/9/16 7:55 PM