Wichita : A Kansas priest and Medal of Honor recipient may be on the road to canonization, as Bishop Carl Kemme of Wichita presented his case to the Vatican on Monday.
Servant of God Emil Kapaun was born in 1916 in Pilsen, a small farming community. He entered a Benedictine boarding school at the age of 14, and ordained a priest at 24.
After ordination, he was sent to serve at his childhood parish. At the outbreak of World War II, many young men of the community were drafted into the military. Father Kapaun expressed to his bishop that he felt called to serve in the Army as a military chaplain to help these young men, but the request was denied.
After several years, he once again requested to become a military chaplain, and this time Bishop Mark Carroll relented. Father Kapaun entered the Army in 1944 and served in Burma and India until being discharged in 1946.
Being back in civilian life was hard on the young priest, however. After obtaining a graduate degree in Washington, D.C., he was positioned in Timken, Kansas. Finding everyday civilian life unfulfilling, Fr. Kapaun longed for the days of tending to the spiritual needs of soldiers. In 1948 he contacted the Army and was given permission by Bp. Carroll to return to chaplaincy duties.
Father Kapaun, now a captain, was suddenly thrown into the Korean War. Joining the Eighth Cavalry Regiment, he was among the first men to enter the conflict. “Tomorrow we are going into combat,” he wrote to his bishop.
Customarily, chaplains are never meant to directly be in battles. Father Kapaun was admired by the soldiers for his bravery, however, because he demanded to be with the men during these moments, at great personal risk, reported ChurchMilitant.
Father Kapaun was well known for even jumping in and out of foxholes amidst gunfire to tend to the wounded and give soldiers moral and spiritual support, going far beyond his expected duties.
Throughout the difficulty of war, seeing men die, Fr. Kapaun never lost his intense devotion to God and others. Captain Joseph O’Conner recalled in 1954:
He came to me when I was in charge of setting up headquarters and asked if he could say Mass for the men in that area. I said, “Father, things are pretty hot here at present and I don’t think you should be up here.” Father said, “Then I think we need a Mass, Captain.”
Father Kapaun always volunteered for difficult missions, and on several occasions nearly lost his life. One man recounted that while on a mission to get more ammunition, he and Fr. Kapaun had been smoking their pipes when they unexpectedly received gunfire. After getting to safety, the soldier looked at Fr. Kapaun and saw his pipe had been shot in two.
On August 2, 1950, Fr. Kapaun and a fellow officer ran across the “no man’s land” of the battle lines to rescue a wounded soldier amidst heavy gunfire. Father Kapaun was awarded the Bronze Star for his heroic efforts.
At Unsan, after the American military had crossed the 38th Parallel, Fr. Kapaun was captured and sent on a march to a North Korean prison camp along with hundreds of other soldiers.
His fellow prisoners recounted that while everyone else slowly deteriorated and acted animalistically, Fr. Kapaun spent his time constantly serving and tending to the needs of others. He began sneaking around camp to visit as many as he could to offer moral and spiritual support, and never once attempted to escape.
Eventually, with lack of nutrition and poor sanitation, Fr. Kapaun contracted dysentery and pneumonia. Near the end of his life, the guards took him away to a different building where he died. But even at the end of his life, he remained cheerful and took care of others, hearing the confession of another man in the last hour of his life.
His comrades were distraught when the guards announced he would be taken away. On his way out, he told them, “As you see, I am crying too, not tears of pain but tears of joy, because I’ll be with my God in a short time.”
Father Kapaun was declared a Servant of God in 1993 by Pope St. John Paul II, and received the Medal of Honor by President Obama in 2013, the highest military honor awarded by the United States.
Many miracles have been officially attributed to Fr. Kapaun’s intercession. According to Bp. Kemme, in 2010 the diocese sent enough documented evidence to the Vatican “to fill the back of a small truck.” The diocese hopes and is confident that, given all the evidence, Servant of God Emil Kapaun will soon be on his way to canonization.