Free Republic

If Army chaplain Emil Kapaun served in Afghanistan today rather than Korea six decades ago, President Obama would probably give the Catholic priest discharge papers instead of the Congressional Medal of Honor.

IntroductionROY WENZL & TRAVIS HEYING What soldiers say Kapaun did is so heroic that it defies believability. Some people regard the meek man as one who will not put up a fight for anything but will let others run over him .... In fact from human experience we know that to accomplish anything good a person must make an effort; and making an effort is putting up a fight against the obstacles. - Father Emil Kapaun Emil Kapaun — priest, soldier and Korean War hero — is a rare man. He has been awarded the Medal of Honor, the...

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...

“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...