A US Army Korean War chaplain to be canonized?

During my teenage years, when I knew I wanted to be a missionary priest, I was inspired by the story of a US Army Chaplain who died in captivity during the Korean War, Fr Emil Kapaun, a priest of the Diocese of Wichita, Kansas. I was thinking of joining the Columbans and knew that some of them had died in the Korean War and others, including Monsignor Thomas Quinlan, later an archbishop, and Father Philip Crosbie, and Australian, were forced to take part in a notorious ‘death march, which they survived. Father Crosbie wrote about his experiences in Three Winters Cold, published in some countries as Pencilling Prisoner. His book was one of the Lord's 'signposts' for me and I read it again on a retreat here in the Philippines in 1988, and was equally inspired.

I was delighted as a to discover that Father Emil Kapaun and I shared the same birthday, 20 April, and he cancelled out, so to speak, Adolf Hitler, who was born on that date also. I was born on Tuesday of Holy Week 1943 while Father Kapaun was born on Thursday of Holy Week in 1916.

Catholic News Agency (CNA) carries a report dated 15 June, taken from Catholic Advance, the newspaper of Father Kaplaun’s diocese, stating that the cause for his canonization is to be launched officially in his home town, Pilsen, Kansas, on 29 June.

Pilsen, KS, Jun 15, 2008 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- The Cause for the Canonization of Father Emil Kapaun, an Army Chaplain who died while in a North Korean Prisoner of War Camp in 1951, will be officially opened on June 29. Father Emil Kapaun, a native of Pilsen, was ordained for the Catholic Diocese of Wichita on June 9, 1940. After serving as a priest in the diocese, Father Kapaun asked to be allowed to serve as a U.S. Army chaplain.

Read the full story here.

There is a website dedicated to the memory and cause of Father Kapaun.

I must confess that while a teenager I saw the vocation of the military chaplain as the greatest of all. In kindergarten Sister Margaret Stanislaus of the Irish Sisters of Charity, who prepared us for First Holy Communion, often spoke of Father Willie Doyle SJ, from Dalkey, County Dublin. He was a member of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and died in the Third Battle of Ypres (Ieper), Belgium, on 17 August 1917. The battle lasted from June to November. My maternal grandmother's brother, Corporal Lawrence Dowd, from near Tara, County Meath, died in the same battle eleven days earlier. Maybe Father Doyle had ministered to him. I located Uncle Larry's grave in Ieper in 2001 with the help of a Belgian/Filipino couple whose marriage I officiated at. I was the first relative ever to visit his grave.

Fr Willie Doyle SJ

Father Emil J. Kapaun

PRAYER

Lord Jesus,

in the midst of the folly of war,

your servant, Chaplain Emil Kapaun

spent himself in total service to you

on the battlefields and in the prison camps of Korea,

until his death at the hands of his captors.

We now ask you, Lord Jesus,

if it be your will,

to make known to all the world

the holiness of Chaplain Kapaun and the

glory of his complete sacrifice for you by

signs of miracles and peace.

In your name, Lord, we ask,

for you are the source of peace,

the strength of our service to others,and our final hope. Amen

Chaplain Kapaun, pray for us.