thedrifter
12-01-07, 08:01 AM
Chaplain put on path to sainthood
Thursday, November 29, 2007
By JOIE TYRRELL
SPECIAL FROM NEWSDAY
NEW YORK -- As the Marines lay dying on a Vietnamese battlefield, the Rev. Vincent Capodanno moved among them, offering comfort and rescuing them amid gunfire.
He, too, had been injured in the battle in 1967, his hand nearly severed and his face wounded. As he went to assist a wounded man, he was shot 27 times in the back and died, the Department of the Navy reported.
Four decades after his heroic efforts, a movement is under way to declare Capodanno, a U.S. Navy chaplain, a Catholic saint.
His story was told recently in a presentation following a Mass for the football team at St. Anthony's High School in South Huntington. The presentation was given by Vietnam veteran John Scafidi, who was at the battle where Capodanno died.
"It made us feel better to know we had a priest with us, who would go out and be in the field with us," said Scafidi, 60, of Secaucus. "In his final hours, he put the Marines ahead of his life."
Capodanno is a distant relative of the Long Island high school's biology teacher, Mark Capodanno, who never met the chaplain but has researched his life. A book titled "The Grunt Padre" was written about him.
"I am always learning something new about him," Mark Capodanno said.
Capodanno's "cause for canonization" officially opened in May 2006 with an announcement that the Catholic Church had permitted the Archdiocese for the Military Services to proceed with the case.
That is one of the first steps to sainthood, said the Rev. Gerry Gordon, chaplain of St. Anthony's High School.
The next step is beatification, according to the official Web site for the canonization of Capodanno, www.vincentcapodanno.org. For Capodanno to be declared beatified and therefore known as "Blessed Capodanno," a medically documented physical cure solely attributed to the miraculous intercession of Vincent Robert Capodanno has to be presented and accepted by the Vatican, according to the Web site.
Born in Staten Island in 1929, Capodanno was a missionary who spent seven years in Taiwan and Hong Kong, later requesting and receiving permission in 1965 to join the Navy Chaplain Corps for service with the Marines in Vietnam.
Since his death on Sept. 4, 1967, many Marines who knew him have identified their chaplain as a living saint and have presented testimony on his bravery, compassion and genuine holiness, his supporters said. He was known to carry hundreds of St. Christopher medals in his pockets through the fields of Vietnam, handing them to the Marines there, Gordon said.
Capodanno is a posthumous recipient of the Medal of Honor, and his memorials include chapels, a boulevard, military buildings, a scholarship fund and a frigate.
"He was a great inspiration, a great hero, a great Catholic and a great American," Gordon said.
Ellie
Thursday, November 29, 2007
By JOIE TYRRELL
SPECIAL FROM NEWSDAY
NEW YORK -- As the Marines lay dying on a Vietnamese battlefield, the Rev. Vincent Capodanno moved among them, offering comfort and rescuing them amid gunfire.
He, too, had been injured in the battle in 1967, his hand nearly severed and his face wounded. As he went to assist a wounded man, he was shot 27 times in the back and died, the Department of the Navy reported.
Four decades after his heroic efforts, a movement is under way to declare Capodanno, a U.S. Navy chaplain, a Catholic saint.
His story was told recently in a presentation following a Mass for the football team at St. Anthony's High School in South Huntington. The presentation was given by Vietnam veteran John Scafidi, who was at the battle where Capodanno died.
"It made us feel better to know we had a priest with us, who would go out and be in the field with us," said Scafidi, 60, of Secaucus. "In his final hours, he put the Marines ahead of his life."
Capodanno is a distant relative of the Long Island high school's biology teacher, Mark Capodanno, who never met the chaplain but has researched his life. A book titled "The Grunt Padre" was written about him.
"I am always learning something new about him," Mark Capodanno said.
Capodanno's "cause for canonization" officially opened in May 2006 with an announcement that the Catholic Church had permitted the Archdiocese for the Military Services to proceed with the case.
That is one of the first steps to sainthood, said the Rev. Gerry Gordon, chaplain of St. Anthony's High School.
The next step is beatification, according to the official Web site for the canonization of Capodanno, www.vincentcapodanno.org. For Capodanno to be declared beatified and therefore known as "Blessed Capodanno," a medically documented physical cure solely attributed to the miraculous intercession of Vincent Robert Capodanno has to be presented and accepted by the Vatican, according to the Web site.
Born in Staten Island in 1929, Capodanno was a missionary who spent seven years in Taiwan and Hong Kong, later requesting and receiving permission in 1965 to join the Navy Chaplain Corps for service with the Marines in Vietnam.
Since his death on Sept. 4, 1967, many Marines who knew him have identified their chaplain as a living saint and have presented testimony on his bravery, compassion and genuine holiness, his supporters said. He was known to carry hundreds of St. Christopher medals in his pockets through the fields of Vietnam, handing them to the Marines there, Gordon said.
Capodanno is a posthumous recipient of the Medal of Honor, and his memorials include chapels, a boulevard, military buildings, a scholarship fund and a frigate.
"He was a great inspiration, a great hero, a great Catholic and a great American," Gordon said.
Ellie