Free Republic

Last month, 41,000 Catholics flocked to the ancient Italian city of Assisi to view the body of a curly-haired teenager dressed in a tracksuit and Nike sneakers. Carlo Acutis was just 15 when he died of leukemia in 2006. His fervent faith inspired him to create websites cataloging Catholic miracles and to minister to the homeless and hungry in his native Milan. After his beatification this year, Acutis, dubbed “the Millennial Saint” and “the patron of the Internet,” is a single step away from canonization — one of the youngest Catholics ever, and the first member of his generation, to...

An All Souls Day Traditional Latin Mass was celebrated Wednesday on the Fort Hood Military base. The Mass was offered on the hood of a military humvee, the traditional way Mass is offered during time of battle. With some 60 people in attendance, the Mass was especially offered up for the fallen 1st Cavalry Division soldiers who died in the Battle of Unsanin during the Korean War on November 2, 1950. The Mass was held on the grounds of the 1st Cavalry Division Museum and was also in honor of Fr. Emile Kapaun, 1st Cavalry Division chaplain and Medal of...

Father Kapaun in an undated photo. (CNS photo/courtesy The Catholic Advance) This afternoon’s White House Medal of Honor ceremony recognizing the heroic efforts of Army chaplain Father Emil Kapaun on the battlefield during the Korean War prompted us to look in our archives and find original news reports on the famed Wichita diocesan priest and candidate for sainthood.Here is a story from March 1951, when Father Patrick O’Connor, a correspondent for CNS’ predecessor, the N.C.W.C. News Service, interviewed soldiers who knew Father Kapaun and last saw him ministering to soldiers before he was taken prisoner. The record shows that the...

In the cold, barren hills of Korea more than 60 years ago, two teary-eyed soldiers stood in a prisoner of war camp where their chaplain lay dying. The Rev. Emil Kapaun was weak, his body wracked by pneumonia and dysentery. After six brutal months in the hellish camp, the once sturdy Kansas farmer's son could take no more. Thousands of soldiers had already died, some starving, others freezing to death. Now the end was near for the chaplain. ~snip~ On April 11, those two young lieutenants, Dowe and Wood, now 85 and 86, will join their comrades, Kapaun's family and...

Wichita, Kan., Apr 27, 2012 / 10:25 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The head of the cause for the beatification of an American priest who died in a Communist prison during the Korean War says the chaplain's fellow inmates are the real promoters of his sainthood. Father John Hotze told CNA on April 18 that there is great support for the cause of Korean War chaplain Father Emil Kapaun “especially among the men who were in prison with him.” “They have been promoting his cause of holiness and that he be awarded the Medal of Honor since they left prison in 1953.”...

US Army Chaplain Father Emil Kapaun stole, suffered and sacrificed his life for his fellow soldiers in a Korean prison camp. Six decades after his death, he is being considered for the Congressional Medal of Honor - and sainthood. On 2 November 1950, Father Kapaun made the decision that led to his death. The Korean war chaplain was in the middle of a firefight, with the American forces overrun by Chinese soldiers outside a crossroads town called Unsan in North Korea. Lighting forest fires to frustrate US reconnaissance planes, the Chinese surrounded the Americans and pressed in, attacking with small...

“Perfection is acquired through our efforts, and if we try to become saints, someday we will be saints.” — Father Emil Kapaun Chase Kear does not seem at first glance to be the poster boy for a Vatican investigation involving sainthood. He chews a little dip, hits targets at turkey shoots, listens to country music when he rolls. In his Facebook profile photo he dresses the part of a halfnaked bandito in a sombrero. He’s a self-described redneck; also foolish and drunk and stupid at times in the past, he says, though less so since his accident. He takes comfort...

"In order to win the crown of heavenly glory, the saints were expected first to carry a heavy cross in life." -- Father Emil Kapaun Over the next six weeks, the POWs in the Pyoktong prison camp began a cloaked and daring effort to save Emil Kapaun’s life. On a rise above them stood the remains of a Buddhist monastery; the guards called it a hospital, but POWs called it "The Death House." The Chinese sometimes killed prisoners by isolating them there from food and help. The POWs knew that’s where Kapaun might end up. In April, weeks after his...

“People whose ambitions are confined to the limits of earthly things would be confounded at the beatitude on meekness.” — Father Emil Kapaun By February 1951 the Allied prisoners at Pyoktong, North Korea, were dying so fast on ground frozen so solid that unburied bodies lay in stacks three to four feet high, 30 to 40 yards long. Men hoarded food or stole it from the weak, and left sick men to die in their own defecation. Many soldiers were in their teens and early 20s, not mature enough to deal with that level of suffering. Father Emil Kapaun never...

Chase Kear after his accident / Fr. Emil Kapaun Wichita, Kan., Jun 24, 2009 / 07:15 am (CNA).- The Congregation for the Causes of Saints is preparing to investigate an alleged miracle in Wichita, Kansas, where doctors are baffled by the unexplained recovery of a young man who had suffered a severe head injury in an accident that had broken his skull.When her 20-year-old son Chase was seriously injured in a pole-vaulting accident on October 2, Paula Kear and her family began to pray fervently for the intercession of Fr. Emil Kapaun, and asked their friends to do the...