1929 – 1967
WASHINGTON, D.C.—On April 11, the nation witnessed an extraordinary event in the East Room of the White House. President Obama presented the Medal of Honor—the nation’s highest military decoration—to the nephew of a deceased Catholic priest, U.S. Army chaplain Father Emil Kapaun, for his uncle’s heroic service and death in the Korean War.
Tonight, the Archdiocese for the Military Services will honor another Catholic priest who has earned the Medal of Honor. Vietnam War hero and U.S. Navy Chaplain Father Vincent Capodanno will be remembered in a Sept. 4 Mass for the repose of his soul at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. He is in heroic company: All five of the U.S. military chaplains who have earned the Medal of Honor since the Civil War were Catholic priests.
Like Father Kapaun, Father Capodanno lived and died as a martyr serving those who serve in front-line combat. Both braved enemy gunfire—unarmed—coming to the rescue of the wounded and dying. Father Kapaun died in a POW camp. Father Capodanno died in the heat of battle. Both are now candidates for sainthood.
The upcoming Mass is scheduled 46 years to the day since Father Capodanno, a Maryknoll missionary from Staten Island, N.Y., perished as a result of no fewer than 27 bullet wounds on a bloody hillside in Vietnam’s Que Son Valley where outnumbered U.S. Marines fought for their lives, pinned down under ambush by North Vietnamese regulars in “fixed bayonet” combat.
In his book, “The Grunt Padre,” Father Daniel L. Mode paints a vivid scene of the attack, quoting survivor accounts of Father Capodanno moving fearlessly around the battlefield, consoling and anointing those in agony and hauling the suffering to safety. Private First Class Julio Rodriguez recalls the moment he first spotted the chaplain. “He was carrying a wounded Marine,” Mr. Rodriguez says. “After he brought him to the relative safety of our perimeter, he continued to go back and forth giving Last Rites to dying men and bringing in wounded Marines. He made many trips, telling us to ‘stay cool; don’t panic.’”
Corporal Keith J. Rounseville says Father Capodanno “was jumping over my (fox) hole, all the while exposing himself to enemy machine gun fire to try and give aid to a wounded Marine. Chaplain Capodanno looked and acted cool and calm, as if there wasn’t an enemy in sight. As he reached the wounded Marine, Chaplain Capodanno lay down beside him and gave him aid and verbal encouragement and telling him medical help was on the way.”
Corporal Ray Harton remembers how he lay wounded and bleeding from a gunshot wound to his left arm. “As I closed my eyes, someone touched me,” he says. “When I opened my eyes, he looked directly at me. It was Father Capodanno. Everything got still: no noise, no firing, no screaming. A peace came over me that is unexplainable to this day. In a quiet, calm voice, he cupped the back of my head and said, ‘Stay quiet Marine. You will be OK. Someone will be here to help you soon. God is with us all this day.’”
According to Corporal David Brooks, “The chaplain’s example of action gave courage to everyone who observed him and sparked others to action. Quite a few more people would have died if not for him.” Mr. Brooks recalls Father Capodanno suffered his first wound in the right shoulder from mortar shrapnel as he rushed to aid a dying Squad Leader. Holding his right arm, the priest reached the Squad Leader’s side, where the two joined in the Lord’s prayer. Mr. Brooks says the chaplain stayed at the man’s side for about five minutes until he died.
Many of the Marines who fought alongside Father Capodanno that day in 1967—a day so hot they recall the rice paddies were like baked concrete—will attend the 6:30 p.m. (ET) memorial Mass tonight at 400 Michigan Avenue, NE in Washington, D.C. Tom Slattery, who was a 20-year-old private barely out of high school when he served with the priest, says “Father Capodanno’s memory has been with me for 46 years now and I ask him every morning and night to join me in prayer.” Tom Byrne, a captain, says he will attend “because I knew him and I feel I have a personal stake in honoring him and what he did.” George Phillips, a corporal, says “it’s an honor to his memory. He was important to me at a difficult time.”
Phillips says the current generation could learn a lot from Father Capodanno’s life example of self-sacrifice. “They only care about themselves,” he says. “They don’t think they have to earn anything. Father Capodanno was not about Father Capodanno. He was about the people he served.” Dr. Donald DiDelius, a medical officer, echoes that sentiment: “He was a man of integrity. Unflinching.”
Tony Grimm, a captain, says that off the battlefield, Father Capodanno “was like the pied piper. He attracted everybody,” Catholics and non-Catholics alike. “When he said Mass,” Mr. Byrne says, “there would always be a lot of Vietnamese who would come to the Mass. He was a priest for everybody.” His eyes “were not sad eyes, but a little somber, reflective,” Mr. Phillips says. “If he was talking to you, that’s where he was focused. There was always in his eyes a calmness about him. It was almost supernatural.”
Even in death, Father Capodanno inspires courage and hope, drawing supplications from those in need. Some have claimed to experience miracle cures upon seeking the intercession of the hero chaplain. They include a Vietnamese nun whose recovery from advanced cancer came without apparent medical explanation. Some of these accounts are under investigation by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints as the Church considers Father Capodanno’s cause for canonization. He has already been declared a “Servant of God,” formally initiating the process.
While those with whom he served don’t doubt his cause, they remember Father Capodanno more for his common touch—as a lieutenant who readily preferred the company of the enlisted “grunts” to that of his fellow officers, earning him the nickname “grunt padre.” “He was not a guy who walked around with a halo,” Mr. Grimm says. Still, the grunt padre’s brothers-in-arms welcome the prospect of his beatification. “The Marine Corps could use a Saint,” Mr. Byrne says, adding, “I hope to go to Rome when he is canonized.”
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The Archdiocese for the Military Services (AMS) was created as an independent archdiocese by Pope John Paul II in 1985 as the only Catholic jurisdiction responsible for endorsing and granting faculties for priests to serve as chaplains in the U.S. military and VA Medical Centers.
AMS-endorsed priests serve at more than 220 U.S. military installations in 29 countries, making the AMS the nation’s only global archdiocese. AMS-endorsed chaplains also serve at 153 VA Medical Centers throughout the U.S.
The AMS service population also includes American Catholic civilians working for the federal government in 134 countries, but currently, due to limited resources, the AMS cannot adequately serve this population.
Worldwide, an estimated 1.8 million Catholics depend on the AMS to meet their spiritual and sacramental needs.
For more information on the Archdiocese for the Military Services, visit www.milarch.org, the only official website for Catholics in the military and for the Cause of Father Vincent Capodanno, MM.
