A Common Language
John Peter got the name of the school wrong. The high school named after Fr. Kapaun merged with another and is today Kapaun Mt. Carmel Catholic High School.
Another anecdote supporting pronouncing his name as ka-PAWN is that his soldiers joked about how his name sounded like the gangster Al Capone.
We were surprised to learn that, even though his cause has been open for quite some time, Fr. Kapaun is still Servant of God and not a Venerable or Blessed.
We reached out to his cause for canonization, and it turns out the hold-up is not due to lack of miracles, but mainly due to money and turnover. Fr. Kapaun was declared Servant of God in 1993. However, at that point the first diocese who was championing the cause ran out of money (getting someone canonized is expensive). Nothing was done on the case until 2008, when another diocese took over.
I think sometime around 2015 they presented the case, but the Congregation turned down the cause. The issue is that canonization does not simply mean that someone is in heaven. The lifelong apostate who converts on his deathbed is by the grace of God in heaven and a saint, but that does not mean he should be canonized. Canonization is specifically for those souls who lived heroic virtue, virtue worthy of imitation.
The Congregation wants concrete evidence of heroic virtue for 10 years. Wichita can only demonstrate 1 year of heroic virtue from Fr. Kapaun. Before the last year of his life, everyone agrees he was quite ordinary. The Congregation had no choice but to turn the cause down, but did suggest another approach.
A few years ago, Pope Francis added an additional route to Venerable besides 10 years of heroic virtue or martyrdom: the "offering of life," when a person arrives at a premature death due to offering their life out of Christian charity. That's the route that they are currently taking, though the cause has also been delayed a bit by the rediscovery of Fr. Kapaun’s remains and the retirement of the last postulator (the guy who heads up the cause).
This is the status as of early 2023.
And yes, I know it’s now called the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. Congregation rolls of the keyboard easier.
The Rev. Emil Kapaun celebrating Mass in the field during the Korean War
Fr. Kapaun is the man second from the left, helping the man
A Catholic church in Anseong (Ansung), South Korea. We were not able to confirm that this is the church that Fr. Kapaun celebrated Mass in, but it is very likely it is.
This recording is an excerpt of a sermon given by Fr. Kapaun on the Far East Network
The American TV show Crossroads did an episode about Fr. Kapaun’s story. It gets a few details wrong (for instance, he was pastor of two different parishes before he reentered the military), but it’s neat to see his story on the small screen.