On the International Day to Combat Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, we remember Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe (1894-1941), conventual Franciscan priest and friar who died voluntarily in the Auschwitz concentration camp, Poland, during the World War II, when asking to exchange with a prisoner about to be executed.
Saint Maximilian Kolbe is the patron saint of drug addicts and was a great promoter of devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
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If you have an addicted friend or family member, you can entrust them to their intercession, with this prayer shared by the Missionaries of Father Kolbe website.
Prayer to Saint Maximilian Kolbe for addicted friends and family:
Saint Maximilian María Kolbe, your life of love and work for souls
She was sacrificed among the horrors of a concentration camp
and accelerated to its end by the injection of a lethal drug.
Look with compassion at (the name of the person is said)
who is trapped in drug addiction
and to whom we entrust to your powerful intercession.
Having offered your own life to preserve that of a family man,
we call upon you with confidence,
knowing that you will understand and help.
Obtain for us the grace to never deny our love and understanding
and never stop constant prayer
so that the enslaving bonds of addiction are broken
and may all health and freedom be restored to (the name of the person is said)
who we love.
We will never stop being grateful to God,
who has helped us and has heard your prayer for us.
Amen.
Originally published June 26, 2023. It has been updated for republication.
Walter Sanchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.