Father Kapaun’s Path to Sainthood Draws Pilgrims to Kansas
Catholics from across the nation are traveling to the small town of Pilsen, Kan., near Wichita, where Father Emil Kapaun once lived. The Vatican is considering the Catholic priest and Korean War hero for sainthood.
As an Army chaplain in World War II and the Korean War, Kapaun didn’t carry a gun. But President Barack Obama, while awarding him a posthumous Medal of Honor in 2013 for his bravery on the battlefield, said the priest wielded the mightiest weapon of all. “bike-riding army chaplain was credited with saving hundreds of soldiers during the Korean War,” Obama said, according to Religion News Service.
Kapaun dragged injured soldiers to safety during the Battle of Unsan. As enemy forces closed in, he allowed himself to be captured so he could continue to care for his men. In the Korean prison camp where they were held, that meant stealing food and medicine to keep them alive and tending to the sick, just as much as it did offering spiritual guidance to men from a wide range of faiths. Kapaun reportedly prayed not only for his fellow prisoners of war but also for the guards who held them captive. After falling ill and being denied medical attention, he died in the camp in 1951 at the age of 35.
The Vatican declared Kapaun a Servant of God in 1993, beginning a formal investigation into his cause for sainthood. His cause began to look better in 2021 when his remains, thought to be lost in a mass grave in Korea, were identified in an unmarked grave in Hawaii. Wichita Cathedral houses his body. The next step on the path to sainthood is beatification, which could jump-start an effort to build a shrine to Kapaun.
“Beatification is really the step where things start to change,” said Scott Carter, coordinator for Kapaun’s cause for sainthood. “I think there’s a great desire to have a shrine to Kapaun.”
Shrines, which often are churches, house relics and artifacts of those venerated by the church. They serve as pilgrimage sites, which are sacred destinations for Catholics seeking to deepen their connection with their faith through a physical journey. Catholics believe saints can bring prayers to God on their behalf. One confirmed miracle is needed for beatification, and a second is needed for canonization as a saint.
“Most of the time, these are medical miracles,” said Scott Carter, the coordinator for Kapaun’s cause for sainthood at the Catholic Diocese of Wichita. “Because we’re able to look for evidence of an actual problem, to show that there’s a change that happens and that change can’t be explained through medical intervention.”
–Alan Goforth
