FOX Nation Streams Season Finale of 'The Saints' Sunday

The season finale of FOX Nation’s critically acclaimed new series, Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints will air this weekend with Maximilian Kolbe on Sunday, December 8th. Hosted, narrated and executive produced by celebrated Academy Award-winning filmmaker Martin Scorsese, the exclusive docudrama explores the remarkable stories of eight men and women who risked everything to embody humanity’s most noble and complex trait — faith. 

With each episode focusing on a singular saint, including Joan of Arc, John the Baptist, Sebastian, Maximillian Kolbe, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Becket, Mary Magdalene, and Moses the Black, Scorsese journeys over 2,000 years of history focusing on these extraordinary figures and their extreme acts of kindness, selflessness, and sacrifice.

On Sunday, December 8th, part one of the series concludes with Milivoje Obradović as Maximilian Kolbe, the Franciscan monk who martyred himself to save a fellow prisoner at Auschwitz. Born in Poland at the turn of the 20th century to devout parents, Kolbe’s views on Judaism were marred by the prevailing antisemitic rhetoric of the time, the same virulent hate that gave rise to Nazi ideologies as well. But his treatment of individual Jews did not reflect the same antisemitism. In 1941, his monastery near Krakow was housing 3,000 people displaced by the Nazis during World War II, half of them were Jewish. 

When the Third Reich invaded Poland, he was arrested and sent to Auschwitz, where he was subjected to backbreaking slave labor. When a man in his barracks escaped, 10 men were selected to starve to death as a punishment. Despite being spared, Kolbe offered to take the place of one of the prisoners – a stranger. Kolbe and nine other men were thrown into a small concrete bunker and forced to slowly starve. 

Throughout the torture, Kolbe offered support and encouragement to his fellow prisoners, Jews and Catholics alike, firmly anchored to the power of hope. At the end of the second week, everyone was dead – everyone except for Kolbe and one fellow prisoner. The guards inject the men with carbolic acid, killing them instantly. When Kolbe was canonized in 1982, the man he chose to die in place of, Franciszek Gajowniczek, was in attendance. Today, Maximilian Kolbe is the patron saint of prisoners.

• CAST: Martin Scorsese (host and narrator), Milivoje Obradović (Maximilian Kolbe), Jesuit priest and editor-at-large of America magazine Father James Martin, S.J. (self), award-winning poet and bestselling author Mary Karr (self), Georgetown senior fellow and New Yorker contributor Paul Elie (self)
• WHEN: Sunday, December 8th
• WHERE: FOX Nation (www.FOXNation.com)

Part II of the acclaimed series will return in Spring 2025 featuring the stories of Francis of Assisi, Thomas Becket, Mary Magdalene and Moses the Black.