Kansas chaplain is one step closer to sainthood

Father Emil Kapaun of Pilsen, Kansas, is one step closer to canonization since a Vatican investigator’s visit June 26th. Andrea Ambrosi, the investigator for the Roman Catholic Church, visited family members of Chase Kear, who miraculously recovered from a traumatic brain injury. The family told Ambrosi that they prayed to Father Kapaun during Kear’s hospitalization and recovery.

Kapaun has a pretty cool history, if his Wikipedia page can be trusted. He was born in Pilsen on April 20, 1916, attended Conception Abbey seminary in Conception, Missouri, and Kendrick Theological Seminary in St. Louis. In 1944, at the height of World War II, he joined the Army. He was stationed in India, and after the war, in Japan near Mount Fuji. In 1950, his unit was sent to South Korea, where he was captured by Chinese Communists.

Unable to sleep during his capture, Kapaun said prayers and comforted the dead and dying, performed baptisms, heard confessions, and held Mass, offering the Eucharist from an alter set up on the front of an Army Jeep. He died in a POW camp in 1951 and was buried in a mass grave.

Original story on Ambrosi’s visit here.