A SAINT FROM KANSAS

 

FATHER EMIL KAPAUN a heroic U.S. military chaplain from Kansas, was declared venerable by Pope Francis on Feb. 25 – putting him one step closer to canonization. He could be the first saint to be a Medal of Honor recipient. The Holy Father recognized Father Kapaun’s “offering of life,” a new cause for beatification distinct from martyrdom that recognizes Christians who have freely offered their lives for others until death.

Father Kapaun served as a U.S. Army chaplain during World War II and the Korean War. He was captured by the North Korean military and died ministering to fellow prisoners in 1951. Widely recognized for his bravery and holiness, he was awarded the Medal of Honor in 2013 and in 1993 Pope St John Paul II declared Father Kapaun a Servant of God. 

After serving in the Chinese-Burma-India theater in World War II, long after many had returned to the United States, Father Kapaun earned a master’s in education from The Catholic University of America before voluntarily returning to service as a military chaplain in Japan and then Korea. 

He logged thousands of miles by jeep to visit troops on the front lines. He was promoted to captain in 1946. Four years later, he found himself among the first troops responding to communist North Korea's invasion of democratic South Korea. He shared the hardships of combat while offering Mass, often using the hood of his jeep as an altar. Father Kapaun also administered the sacraments to the dying at the risk of his life, while retrieving wounded soldiers. In 1950, one such rescue, conducted under intense enemy fire near Kumchon, South Korea, earned him a Bronze Star Medal for bravery in action.

The priest also wrote to the families of troops, assuring them that their fallen soldiers had received last rites from him.

Father Kapaun and his fellow troops were surrounded in November 1950 after Chinese forces entered the war. He initially escaped capture, but then chose to remain and tend the wounded with an Army medic. As a result, he was taken prisoner but still managed to intervene to prevent the execution of a wounded soldier.

He encouraged his fellow captives along the arduous march to the Pyoktong prison camp. Once there, he continued to sustain them through his ministry, which was forbidden by the communist guards, for whom he prayed, leading the prisoners to do the same.

Father Kapaun also refuted the guards' attempts at communist indoctrination, responding to one taunt with, "God is as real as the air you breathe but cannot see; as the sounds you hear but cannot see; as the thoughts and ideas you have but cannot see or feel."

In 1951, Father Kapaun fell ill, and was forcibly moved to the camp's hospital, where patients were left to die. He stilled the protests of his fellow POWs, saying, "Don't worry about me. I'm going where I always wanted to go, and when I get there, I'll say a prayer for all of you."

At the age of 35, Father Kapaun died on May 23, 1951. His body was buried by a fellow prisoner near the Pyoktong prison camp infirmary, and repatriated to the U.S., along with the remains of some 560 Americans from the camp, in 1954 at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

For years he lay under an "Unknown" marker with about 70 soldiers and was not identified until a fellow prisoner saw a picture of Father Kapaun in a Knights of Columbus magazine at a Veteran Affairs clinic in Florida in 2003. In 2021, DNA testing confirmed that the remains were those of Father Kapaun, and in September 2021, he was reinterred in Wichita's cathedral.

Painting top: The Class of 2012 of the Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in St. Louis, MO, commissioned this painting of Father Emil Kapaun from artist Cynthia Hitschler. The painting was presented to the seminary as a gift upon their graduation.