American Soon-to-Be Saint, Father Kapaun

 Denver Newsroom, Mar 5, 2021 / 05:27 pm MT (CNA).- Department of Defense investigators have identified the remains of U.S. Army chaplain and Servant of God Fr. Emil Kapaun among the unknown Korean War soldiers buried in a Hawaiian cemetery, much to the surprise and joy of the priest’s relatives and devotees in his home state of Kansas.

 

The priest had been a chaplain during the Second World War and became known for his service in the Korean War with the U.S. Army's Eighth Cavalry regiment. After he was taken prisoner, he served and ministered to other soldiers in a prison camp, where he died May 23, 1951.
 
The U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency has determined that the priest’s remains were among unidentified soldiers buried at the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii, the Wichita diocese said March 4. Many soldiers’ remains had been moved there from North Korea in the 1950s and again in the 1990s.

 In 1993, Kapaun was named a “Servant of God,” the first step on the way to being declared a saint. To be declared “venerable” is the second step in the canonization process. A key meeting regarding his case had been scheduled at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in March 2020, but that meeting was postponed due to the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic in Italy.

Kapaun was born in Pilsen, Kansas in 1916. He came of age during the Great Depression. He was ordained a priest in 1940 and began ministry as a parish priest in his hometown.
 
During World War II Kapaun would offer the sacraments at the nearby Harrington Army Air Field until he became a full-time army chaplain in 1944. He was stationed in India and Burma for the duration of the war. There, he ministered to soldiers and served his unit with a selfless attitude.
 
He also gained a reputation for courage. After Kapaun’s jeep had been damaged, he would often ride his bicycle to meet soldiers even at the front lines. He would follow the sound of gunshots to find them.
 
After World War II ended, Kapaun studied history and education at the Catholic University of America. He returned home for a brief time as pastor of his boyhood parish and served at several other parishes. In 1948, the United States issued a call for military chaplains to return to service. Kapaun responded. He was then sent to Texas, Washington, and Japan before deployment to Korea.
 
During the Battle of Unsan in November 1950, Kapaun worked tirelessly to comfort the suffering and retrieve the wounded from the battlefield. One of the soldiers he retrieved was a wounded Chinese soldier, who helped him negotiate a surrender after he was surrounded by enemy troops. Kapaun was taken captive as a prisoner of war.
 
Even then, he helped others. Kapaun carried a wounded American prisoner who could not walk some 30 miles to a prison camp, though the soldier weighed 20 pounds more than the priest. The man could have been killed by enemy soldiers if he could not keep up with the march.
 
The priest was taken to prison camp number five in Pyoktong, a bombed-out village that served as a detainment center. The soldiers at the camp were severely mistreated and suffered from malnourishment, dysentery, and a lack of warm clothing to counter an extremely cold winter. Kapaun would do all he could for the soldiers. He would wash their soiled clothes, retrieve fresh water, and attend to their wounds.
 
The priest helped his fellow prisoners solve problems and keep up morale. He would stay up at night to write letters home on behalf of wounded soldiers. Many returned prisoners of war said his efforts helped them to survive in a harsh winter. For those who did not survive, the priest helped to bury their corpses.
 
Fr. Kapaun would celebrate the sacraments for his fellow prisoners, hear their confessions, and say Mass. On Easter Sunday 1951, about two months before his death, he held a sunrise service for prisoners.
 
When he developed pneumonia and a blood clot in his leg, the chaplain was denied medical treatment, which led to his death.
 
For his bravery at Unsan, Kapaun was posthumously bestowed the Congressional Medal of Honor in a 2013 ceremony under President Barack Obama. The medal is the United States’ highest military award for bravery.

Saints and Italians Need Not Apply

New York City, N.Y., Aug 19, 2019 / 03:30 pm (CNA).- A New York City public arts program has said it will not build a statue in honor of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, despite the saint receiving the most nominations in a public poll. 

She Built NYC was established in June of 2018 under the patronage of Chirlane McCray, wife of New York Mayor Bill De Blasio, to create more statues of women around the city of New York. The public were asked to nominate women for a potential statue and the campaign received over 2,000 votes for over 300 eligible women.

The results of the nominating period were published in December, with Mother Cabrini receiving 219 nominations - more than double the number received by second-place finisher, Jane Jacobs. 
Despite the public vote, the New York Post reported on Aug. 10 that the selection committee, led by McCray and former New York deputy mayor Alicia Glen, had excluded the first American saint from the planned statutes, instead choosing to honor Rep. Shirley Chisolm, Katherine Walker, Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Elizabeth Jennings Graham, Billie Holiday, and Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias. They received the third, fifth, seventh, 19th, 22nd, 24th and 42nd-most nominations, respectively.  

LGBT rights activists Johnson and Rivera were biological males and will be featured together in a single statue. Both were self-identified “drag queens” and co-founders of the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. The pair received a combined 86 nominations.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Billie Holiday died from drinking herself to death, and was arrested on her death bed for narcotics posession.

I'm surprised Margaret Sanger didn't get any votes. 

First the Good News

Vatican City, Jul 6, 2019 / 04:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis approved the miracle attributed to Archbishop Fulton Sheen Friday, making possible the American television catechist's beatification.

The Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints promulgated the decree approving Sheen’s miracle on July 6.

The miracle involves the unexplained recovery of James Fulton Engstrom, a boy born apparently stillborn in September 2010 to Bonnie and Travis Engstrom of the Peoria-area town of Goodfield. He showed no signs of life as medical professionals tried to revive him. The child’s mother and father prayed to Archbishop Sheen to heal their son. 




 Along with Fulton Sheen, the Vatican Congregation of the Causes of Saints also recognized the heroic virtues of seven Servants of God:

Lebanese Patriarch of Antioch of the Maronites Elia Hoyek (1843-1931); Italian Archbishop Giovanni Vittorio Ferro of Reggio Calabria-Bova (1901-1992); Spanish founder of the Institute of  Missionaries of Charity Ángel Riesco Carbajo (1902-1972); Polish Father Ladislao Korniłowicz, a diocesan priest (1884-1946); Italian Franciscan Father Angelico Lipani (1842-1920); Filipino foundress of the Congregation of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Catherine of Siena Francisca del Espíritu Santo (1647-1711); and the French lay founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of Maternal Charity Etienne-Pierre Morlanne (1772-1862).

Pope Francis also approved the equipollent canonization of Blessed Bartholomew of the Martyrs, the 16th-century Portugese Domician Archbishop of Braga, inscribing him in the book of saints.

e·qui·pol·lent

[ˌēkwəˈpälənt, ˌekwəˈpälənt]

ADJECTIVE

archaic

1. equal or equivalent in power, effect, or significance.

Personnally, I Would Rather Be in New York

New York City, N.Y., Jun 9, 2018 / 12:33 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Superior Court of New York ruled Friday in favor of Joan Sheen Cunningham, who had petitioned to move the body of her uncle, Venerable Fulton Sheen, to the Cathedral of St. Mary in Peoria. The body of the late archbishop is currently in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.
The Diocese of Peoria welcomed the decision.
“This is the second time that the Superior Court of New York has ruled in favor of Joan Sheen Cunningham’s petition,” read a June 8 statement from the Peoria diocese.
The judge, Arlene Bluth, ruled that “the location of Archbishop Sheen's final resting place would not have been his primary concern” and that “it makes no sense, given his lifelong devotion to the Catholic Church, that he would choose a location over the chance to become a saint.”

 Or as Cardinal Dolan says....
 
 Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York says he is happy to be a cardinal but that he is aiming for a higher calling.
“As grateful as I am for being a cardinal, I really want to be a saint,” Cardinal Dolan said to the media after the Feb. 18 ceremony. “I mean that, and I’ve got a long way to go, but it is all about holiness; it is all about friendship with Jesus, and it is all about being a saint. And that’s what I want to be.”

Bees

We all know the Patron of beekeepers is St. Ambrose...

And we know the story of St. Modomnoc bringing the bees to Ireland...

One of the best known stories regarding Saint Modomnoc concerns his work as a beekeeper. Bees were kept both for their honey and the production of mead. Modomnoc was given charge of the bees in a sheltered corner of the monastery garden where he planted the kinds of flowers best loved by the bees.He talked to the bees as he worked among them and they buzzed around his head in clouds as if they were responding. He would walk among the hives in the evening and talk to them, and the bees, for their part, would crowd out to meet him. He was never stung. When the time came for him to return to Ireland, three times the bees followed in great swarm and settled on the mast. St. David perceiving this occurrence to be a good omen allowed Modomnoc to bring the bees to Ireland.When he landed, he set up a church at a place called Bremore, near Balbriggan, in County Dublin, and here he established the bees in a garden just like the one they had in Wales.

Here's a new bee story...about the latest American to be beatified, Father Solanus Casey.

One day, Fr. Groeschel and another friar were visiting the beehives kept by the friars, when the bees started swarming angrily.
Fr. Groeschel was instructed to get Fr. Solanus, who started talking to the bees and calming them when he arrived.
"He started to talk to the bees. 'All right now. Calm down. All right,'" Father Groeschel recalled in a story to Our Sunday Visitor. "And they started to calm down and go back into the hive.... I was absolutely in total shock.”
Fr. Solanus recognized the problem - there were two queen bees in the hive - and without the standard protective gloves or netting, stuck his bare hand in the hive and pulled out the second queen without getting stung.
He was also known for calming bees by playing his harmonica, which is now on display at the Solanus Casey Center in Detroit.

The Passion of John the Baptist, August 29

Part of today's Gospel. From Mark 6: 22-29:

Herodias' own daughter came in and performed a dance that delighted Herod and his guests.
The king said to the girl,"Ask of me whatever you wish and I will grant it to you."
He even swore many things to her,"I will grant you whatever you ask of me, even to half of my kingdom."
She went out and said to her mother, "What shall I ask for?"
She replied, "The head of John the Baptist."
The girl hurried back to the king's presence and made her request,
"I want you to give me at once on a platter the head of John the Baptist."
The king was deeply distressed, but because of his oaths and the guests
he did not wish to break his word to her.
So he promptly dispatched an executioner with orders to bring back his head.
He went off and beheaded him in the prison.
He brought in the head on a platter and gave it to the girl.
The girl in turn gave it to her mother.
When his disciples heard about it,
they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.

The overview:

The First American-Born Martyr

 Father Stanley Rother will be beautified in September.



He may be a saint, but that is still one ugly stole.

The Pope, Mother Cabrini, and Immigration

Vatican City, Jan 15, 2017 / 05:10 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, Pope Francis pointed to St. Frances Cabrini as an example of how to treat foreigners, calling her a “courageous” woman who knew how to bring God’s love to those who were lonely and in hardship.

After praying the Angelus with pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square Jan. 15, Pope Francis sent a special greeting to members of different ethnic communities gathered who had gathered in honor of the World Day of Migrants and Refugees.

This courageous Sister dedicated her life to bringing the love of Christ to those who were far from their homeland and families,” he said, adding that her witness can help us learn “to take care of our foreign brother, in whom Jesus is present, often suffering, rejected and humiliated.”

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Mother Cabrini worked almost exclusively Italians who were:

1) Catholic (and therefore did not reject Jesus as the Son of God),

2) In the country legally, and

3) unlike the wave of immigrants in Europe, were looking for work.

Mother Cabrini's biggest contribution was educating and cathecizing the Italian immigrants to the United States, many of whom were here when she arrived.

Chaplain of the Lowriders

In a July 8 audience with the prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Pope Francis approved the publication of decrees that advance nine beatification causes.
In approving a decree on a miracle attributed to the intercession of Ven. Louis Ormières (1809-90), a French priest who founded the Sisters of the Holy Guardian Angel, the Pontiff has paved the way for his beatification.
Pope Francis also approved two decrees of martyrdom, clearing the way for the beatification of:

• Father Antonio Arribas Hortigüela, MSC (1908-36) and six companions, Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, killed in Seriñá, Catalonia (in Spain) during the Spanish Civil War
• Josef Mayr-Nusser (1910-45), an Italian layman who was active in the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. A husband and father of a newborn son, he was drafted into Hitler’s army and refused to recite the oath to Hitler, dying en route to the Dachau concentration camp.

Finally, the Pope approved decrees on the heroic virtues of six servants of God, who may now be honored with the title “venerable”:

Bishop Gallegos

 
Finally, the Pope approved decrees on the heroic virtues of six servants of God, who may now be honored with the title “venerable”:

• Auxiliary Bishop Alphonse Gallegos of Sacramento (1931-91), who was born in Albuquerque, ordained a priest of the Order of Augustinian Recollects in 1958, and ordained a bishop in 1981
• Father Rafael Sánchez García (1911-73), a Spanish diocesan priest
• Brother Andrés García Acosta (1800-53), a Franciscan who was born in Spain and died in Chile
• Father Giuseppe (José) Marchetti (1869-96), an Italian Scalabrinian missionary priest who ministered in Brazil and co-founded the Missionaries of Charles Borromeo (the Scalabrinian Sisters) with his younger sister, Blessed Assunta Marchetti
• Father Giacomo Viale (1830-1912), an Italian Franciscan who worked as a parish priest
• Sister Maria Pia della Croce (Maddalena Notari) (1847-1919), the Italian foundress of a religious community devoted to Eucharistic adoration

I love this:

On Oct. 6, 1991, Gallegos died when he was struck by a car by the side of the road while returning to Sacramento from Gridley, California Because he was known as "the bishop of the barrio"approximately 300 lowriders cars drove in a procession before the bishop’s funeral Mass at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament. The bishop was considered as an unofficial chaplain to lowriders and migrant workers.

I wish I could have seen that! I can't find any pictures of the funeral procession, but it must have looked like this:

Altar Relics

I am beginning a quest to find out whose relics are in the altar at St. Joseph Church. If you know, please tell me! ARE there relics in the altar? Father Z answers:

QUAERITUR:

It recently came up in conversation that a consecrated altar should have a relic on it, or perhaps built into it. A friend insisted that the Mass would be illicit (but not invalid) without such a relic present. My question is: What are the requirements for altars in regards to relics? Are they needed for the Mass to be licit and how ought they to be incorporated into the altar?

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal in 302, that the tradition of depositing relics of the saints under a dedicated altar is to be retained. The clear preference is for the depositions of significant and decent sized relics which can be identified and certified.
It is no longer a requirement for the liceity of the Holy Mass that it be offered on a dedicated altar with a relic deposited in it. For a good reason, a priest is permitted to offer Mass elsewhere. However, it is reasonable for a church to have a dedicated (and relic-enclosing) altar, unless the church is temporary or there is some delay in the construction of the permanent, fixed altar.

I hope the relic is interesting, like Kateri Tekakwitha's rib.

Event at St. Mary of the Woods, West Terre Haute

 From their website:

Professional artist Becky Hochhalter brings one of her popular Arte è Vino events to Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College (SMWC) as one of the College’s 175^th anniversary events.
SMWC will host Wine & Design on February 21, 2015 from 6 to 8 p.m. in the LeFer Hall Ballroom. Hochhalter will instruct participants on how to create a beautiful luminary sculpture using clay and wine bottles. Artistic juices will flow, as everyone will sculpt a unique piece of art. The $35 fee per person includes desserts and the materials needed to create one luminary sculpture. A cash bar will be available.

While you are there, you can visit Saint Theodore Guerin's fingers.

An Illinois Saint?

There are three Catholic saints born in what is now the United States. Kateri Tekakwitha was a Mohawk Indian who preceded the founding of the United States. Elizabeth Ann Seton was born in New York, but was a subject of the Queen. Katherine Drexel was born in  Philadelphia.


Now this news about Bishop Fulton Sheen:

A Vatican-appointed panel of theologians has approved a miracle attributed to the intercession of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, moving the renowned American preacher closer to beatification.
The Archbishop Fulton Sheen Foundation announced that the Vatican experts had verified the authenticity of the miracle, which involved the revival of an infant who had appeared to be stillborn. In March, a panel of physicians had found that there was no medical explanation for the child's recovery.
The miracle still requires formal approval from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. If Pope Francis then authorizes the release of a decree certifying the miracle, all requirements would be fulfilled for the beatification of Archbishop Sheen.
Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria, Illinois, the home town of Archbishop Sheen, said that there is "no timeline" for the final Vatican approval of the miracle, or the scheduling of a beatification ceremony. The beatification would be held in Peoria, he said. 

Bishop Sheen was born in El Paso, Illinois. Wikipedia reports that :

 In August 1975, the city became the last locality in the contiguous United States to convert its telephone service from manual switching; prior to that time, telephones in the city could not be dialed directly from any outside location, the assistance of an operator being necessary to place the call, and local telephone numbers consisted of four digits