Volunteers Sought For Tulia Kolbe Retreat

Amarillo—Team formation meetings will begin soon for the final Kolbe Prison Retreat of the year, according to Deacon Darryl Dixon, a member of the diocesan Prison Ministry team.
 
The retreat is scheduled Thursday, Sept. 18 through Saturday, Sept. 20 at the Mechler Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Tulia.
 
Team formation meetings for this retreat take place Tuesday evenings from 6:30 to 8:30 in the parlor at St. Thomas the Apostle Church, 4100 South Coulter.  
Deacon Dixon is requesting the support of 30 men from the Knights of Columbus, the ACTS Community and the Cursillo Movement to make the retreat at the Mechler Unit possible.
 
“We are asking for volunteers for these retreats and any assistance to this ministry will be greatly appreciated,” he said.
 
The Kolbe Retreats are named after St. Maximilian Kolbe, the Patron Saint of Prisoners, according to Deacon Dixon. St. Maximilian was a Polish Conventual Franciscan Friar who was sent to Auschwitz during World War II in 1941. When Nazi guards selected ten people to be put into an underground bunker to be starved to death in punishment for a prisoner escaping in July 1941, Father Kolbe volunteered to die in place of one of the men selected, Franciszek Gajowniczek. Father Kolbe died Aug. 14, 1941 after a lethal injection of carbolic acid. He was canonized as a Saint by Pope (now Saint) John Paul II on Oct. 10, 1982.
 
For more details or to volunteer to be a team member on a Kolbe Retreat, please call Deacon Dixon at 806-290-8842. The Kolbe Prison Ministry is a 501(c)(3) organization and all donations are charitable donations for tax purposes. Donations can be mailed to Kolbe Prison Ministries, P.O. Box 4125, Amarillo, 79116.