For author, new book about Father Emil Kapaun was a journey of faith

Joe Drape first heard about the humble, heroic Kansas priest more than a decade ago when he was in Smith Center chronicling a season of the immensely successful high school football team for what would become a New York Times best-seller.

Those stories stayed with Drape long after he had finished “Our Boys: A Perfect Season on the Plains with the Smith Center Redmen.”

Drape, an award-winning sportswriter for the New York Times, has written several nonfiction books on sports topics over the years. When his editor suggested he consider writing a book about something other than sports, one name kept coming back to him as he pondered possibilities: Emil Kapaun, the priest he’d first heard about back in Kansas.

The result is THE SAINT MAKERS: Inside the Catholic Church and How a War Hero Inspired a Journey of Faith, which will be released on Tuesday, Dec. 1. Drape will partner with Watermark Books for a virtual book launch event at 6 p.m on Dec. 3.

Kapaun was born on a farm outside tiny Pilsen in Marion County, was ordained a priest in the Catholic Diocese of Wichita and served as a military chaplain in World War II and Korea before dying in a prisoner-of-war camp in 1951 at the age of 35. Kapaun is the most decorated military chaplain in American history, with honors that include the Congressional Medal of Honor and a bronze star.

“To me, he’s the ultimate Kansan: resourceful, stoic, comfortable in his own skin, and self-reliance,” Drape said. “All those things he did during the war: being able to rig all the stuff up for everybody, the fact that he always outworked, out-rescued, out-hustled everybody else, and it wasn’t because he was showing off. It’s just that was who he was.”

Kapaun became known for his courage in battle, dashing out into intense enemy fire to rescue the injured – one bullet whizzed past so close it sliced through the stem of the pipe in his mouth. He would dart from one foxhole to the next, offering water, an encouraging word and a prayer to the pinned down soldiers.

Once he was taken prisoner, his resourcefulness went to another level. He foraged for food, fashioned pots and pans out of metal scraps, poured hot water through a sock with some beans in it and offered the “coffee” to anyone who wanted it — though it was anything but coffee.

The Saint Makers is part biography, part detective story, part process story and part personal journey for Drape, who was born into a Catholic family in Kansas City and still has family in Kansas. He’s excited to tell the story “of an interesting guy that most people don’t know about.”

The book also explores how the Catholic Church canonizes saints. It’s an expensive, intensive, typically glacial process that few people — even Catholics — understand.

Along the way, he introduces readers to two key figures in Kapaun’s journey toward sainthood: Fr. John Hotze, who, as episcopal delegate for the cause gathered thousands of pages of documents and stories and sermons that built the case for Kapaun’s canonization; and Dr. Andrea Ambrosi, the postulator for Kapaun, the man who would go to the Vatican and argue the case for why this humble Kansas priest should be declared a saint.

“He’s impressive by any means,” Drape said of Kapaun.

Drape, who lives in New York, was finishing the book in the early days of the COVID pandemic. He drew inspiration from Kapaun as the virus swept through the city.

“Here is a guy who dealt with disease and brutality and fear in those prison camps, these terrible conditions,” Drape said. “He not only endured, he kept everybody else ‘up.’

“I tell people I spent the early days of the pandemic with Father Kapaun. That was a very comforting thing.”

On a certain level, Drape said, he could relate to what he read about Kapaun’s time in the POW camp after being captured by the Chinese during the Korean War.

“Sirens were everywhere” in New York, he said. “We knew people getting sick. One of my early editors died in the early days” of the pandemic.

“Nobody knew what was going on. Everybody was isolated … so it’s really sort of a dark and scary time. And he brought me a great deal of comfort, not only to throw myself into the writing process, but to live in your head his life, and the virtues of faith, service and courage that he displayed during all that.”

Working on the book changed him, Drape said, and he relates that journey in the pages.

“It’s made me more aware of how important faith and trying to be more spiritual is,” he said. “It wasn’t like I lost my faith. I just lost touch with how to tend to my faith. It kind of re-set me and gave me some tools to try to live a better spiritual life. There’s good days and bad days. That’s the way it is for all of us.”

The book was poised to include a potentially significant step in Kapaun’s journey toward canonization. The Congregation for the Causes of Saints was scheduled to meet on March 10 in Rome to decide if the documents compiled by the diocese sufficiently proved that the chaplain had lived a life of heroic virtue and sanctity.

If approved, the case would be presented to the pope, who would then decide if Kapaun is worthy of the title Venerable, the second step of four toward sainthood. A miracle would then need to be verified for Kapaun to be declared “blessed,” or beatified.

Ambrosi has what he considers to be particularly strong evidence of two miracles attributed to Kapaun: Avery Gerleman’s unexplainable recovery from a catastrophic illness in 2006 when she was 12, and the complete healing of Chase Kear from a pole-vaulting mishap in 2008 that resulted in a broken skull and massive brain swelling – devastating injuries doctors said should have killed him or left him in a vegetative state.

Should the Congregation determine one of those miracles is authentic, Kapaun would be in position to be declared “blessed” by the pope. Another miracle would then have to occur, be reviewed and approved by the Congregation for Kapaun to be canonized a saint.

“That miracle hasn’t happened yet,” Hotze said.

Drape’s explanation of how the miracles will be utilized was inaccurate in the initial printing of the book. The error has been corrected for future copies, he said.

But the day before the Congregation’s scheduled meeting in March, the government of Italy ordered a national lockdown due the spreading pandemic. No new date for the Congregation to review Kapaun’s case has been set.

Hotze is taking it all in stride.

“Everyone would probably agree that there are many misconceptions and misunderstandings on the workings and processes of the Catholic Church,” Hotze said in statement released in response to questions about the book and Kapaun’s cause for canonization. “As made evident by the book, The Saint Makers, one being officially named a ‘saint’ is one of those processes.

“As Catholics, we believe that the Church continues to be guided by the Holy Spirit,” Hotze continued. “You can see the Spirit working as the Church investigates the lives of those who will be named ‘saint’…however, one must understand that we do not make ‘saints.’ Ultimately, there is only one ‘saint maker,’ that being God, himself.”

Drape is convinced the book is arriving at a valuable time.

“I’m especially gratified that I’m throwing it into the world” now, he said. “After we’ve had so much division, so much illness and fear.

“It’s been a time of turbulence. This is a book we all need to read about, or be reminded about, just what goodness looks like.”

This story was originally published November 26, 2020 at 5:01 AM.