Fundraising begins for statue of Father Kapaun in Kansas capitol building

The Kansas war hero who might become a saint has taken one more step toward having his likeness enshrined in the Kansas State Capitol.

Artists will cast molten bronze into a steely-eyed statue of Father Emil Kapaun, the Kansas farm boy, Catholic priest, Korean War martyr and Medal of Honor hero. A fundraising effort to achieve that recently was announced.

Kapaun nephew Ray Kapaun knows what his uncle might say about all this fuss. “He’d say: ‘Are you kidding me?’ “

No timetable for installment of the statue has been set.

Private money will pay all costs.

The Chaplain Kapaun Memorial Committee has started a fundraising campaign and donations are being accepted at www.kapaunmemorial.com. They hope to raise $250,000.

“The Chaplain Kapaun Memorial will stand as a tribute not only to his life of sacrificial service and faith, but also to the enduring values of courage, compassion, and duty,” said Wichita Republican state Sen. Chase Blasi in a written statement. He chairs the Chaplain Kapaun Memorial Committee.

Pope Francis in February elevated Kapaun to “venerable” an important distinction along the rungs of the Vatican ladder to sainthood. The next rung would be for a pope to declare Kapaun “blessed.” The rung after that is canonization as a saint.

The new pope, Leo XIV, will likely not immediately move to elevate Kapaun, said the Rev. John Hotze, who has overseen the Wichita Diocese effort to move Kapaun up that ladder.

“Leo will be concerned, as an American pope, about doing something that some might think is favoritism,” Hotze said. He will keep pushing the cause, though.

“We are excited to invite Kansans and all Americans to help keep Kapaun’s legacy burning bright at the heart of our great state,” Blasi said.

Gov. Laura Kelly last year signed a bill — passed unanimously by the Legislature — to authorize statue fundraising.

It will be yet another honor for Kapaun, along with his military honors and the sainthood candidacy, as well as the eternal gratitude of Korean War veterans who said he saved many of their lives.

Some of them say his Chinese and North Korean captors murdered him by slow starvation.

His remains rest in a marble tomb inside the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in downtown Wichita. Anyone attending masses there can walk up to the tomb.

Kapaun started life as a farm boy from Pilsen. He became a priest, first in his hometown church, then later in Timken. He joined the Army as a chaplain in World War II and saw no battlefield action.

But in the Korean War, he ran toward North Korean and Chinese infantry positions to drag wounded soldiers to American foxholes — many times under fire. He was captured at the battle of Unsan, along with many of his fellow soldiers from the 8th Cavalry. Guards, shooting wounded GIs along the way, force-marched them to a prison camp along the Chinese border.

For the next six months, he picked lice off sick, starving prisoners, washed their underwear and gave his own food away to the hungry. Above all, his fellow prisoners said, he denounced Chinese army propaganda specialists to their faces when they tried to tempt or force captured GIs to betray their country by giving false recorded testimonies.

This probably got him killed, fellow prisoners said. He died of starvation and disease in May 1951 and was buried in a shallow hole.

His remains were found by Army specialists in 2021 — buried, to their surprise, in the military cemetery known as the Punchbowl on Oahu Island, Hawaii. The Chinese had repatriated his remains to the U.S. after the war, but the Chinese had not identified who the remains belonged to. DNA tests confirmed his identity.

Lundeen Sculpture of Loveland, Colorado, the studio that designed the bronze statue of Amelia Earhart for the U.S. Capitol, will design the statue.

Find more Eagle coverage of Father Emil Kapaun