24 The Catholic University of America Magazine Spring 2014 25

Larry Morris, general counsel at The CatholicUniversity of America, was just 19 when heinvited Archbishop Fulton Sheen to give atalk at the Midwest university where Morriswas a junior. The day of the lecture inSeptember 1976, Morris and his girlfriendpicked up Archbishop Sheen, who invitedthem to join him for tea and toast. At a small restaurant near campus, he was

“perfectly content talking to us,” notes Morris.“There was no foot tapping, no sense that hehad to be somewhere else.” In fact, like “akind uncle,” he shared a piece of advice thathas stuck with Morris: Always check out TheNew York Times book review section, so youknow what everyone else is reading.At 81, the archbishop had slowed down

since the days when an estimated 30 millionviewers tuned in to his national TV show LifeIs Worth Living, but he still drew an audienceof several hundred people to the talk laterthat day.On Oct. 2, 1979, two months before

Archbishop Sheen’s death, Pope John Paul IIheld an audience at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, where he embraced theclergyman. The Pope said, “You have written

and spoken well of the Lord Jesus Christ. Youare a loyal son of the Church.”When Archbishop Sheen passed away on

Dec. 9, 1979, he was eulogized as the world’sfirst televangelist who touched the lives ofmillions. In June 2012, Pope Benedict XVInamed him venerable. But he is not the onlyalumnus who may be a saint. He is one of sixalums whose causes are making their waythrough the canonization process. As Pope Francis prepares to canonize

Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II onApril 27, Catholic University is honoringArchbishop Sheen, whose cause is advancingquickly, according to the executive director ofthe foundation that promotes his canonization.This semester, the student group ModernCatholic Authors will present the second inits series of talks on Archbishop Sheen. Sister Maria Frassati Jakupcak, O.P.,

co-chair of a University committee that isplanning several spring 2015 events tocommemorate Archbishop Sheen, says shehopes that Catholic University students “willfind in him both a role model and a friend.”A religious in residence at Regan Hall and ateaching fellow pursuing her doctorate in

English, she notes that Archbishop Sheen’scause “is a reflection of Catholic University’sunique place in the history of AmericanCatholicism. This is an institution thatproduces saints.” Born May 8, 1895, to farmer Newt Sheen

and his wife, Delia, the future archbishopwas ordained a priest of the Peoria diocese onSept. 20, 1919. As a seminarian, he startedhis lifelong practice of spending an hour inprayer before the Blessed Sacrament. AtCatholic University, he prayed daily at one ofthe side altars in Caldwell Chapel.Archbishop Sheen studied at the University

from 1919 to 1921 — a time when the areaaround campus was known as Little Romebecause so many religious orders had housesfor their seminarians who took classes at CUA. Hired by the University in 1926, hetaught theology and philosophy, usually inMcMahon Hall, Room 112. The May 25,1932, edition of The Tower student newspapernotes that his sermon in Gibbons [Hall]Chapel on Ascension Day “will remain achapter in the life of each senior.”At the same time, his reputation as a

national speaker was growing. In 1926,Archbishop Sheen spoke on the radio for thefirst time, giving a series of Sunday eveningLenten sermons on a New York station. Fouryears later, he made his first appearance onThe Catholic Hour broadcast by NBC. In1952, he made his TV debut on Life Is WorthLiving, giving weekly lectures on topics thatblended theology, philosophy, and politics. Maria Mazzenga, the University’s education

archivist, Ph.D. 2000, says that his popularity

For Some, the Road to SainthoodGoes Through CUA

AS POPE FRANCIS PREPARES TO CANONIZE TWO OF HIS PREDECESSORS, THE

MAGAZINE LOOKS AT PRIEST ALUMNI WHO TOOK CLASSES, STUDIED IN THE

LIBRARY, AND WALKED THE CAMPUS WHEN THEY WERE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY

STUDENTS. NOW IT SEEMS THEY TOO MIGHT BE NEAR SAINTHOOD. A Televangelist and ‘Pioneer of the New Evangelization’

ARCHBISHOP FULTON SHEEN, VENERABLE

By Catherine Lee

Photos courtesy of (clockwise): Diocese of Rochester Archives (Sheen), The Cardinal Cooke Guild (Cooke), Catholic Diocese of Wichita (Kapaun), and Passionists Historical Archives, Weinberg Memorial Library, The University of Scranton (Foley).

26 The Catholic University of America Magazine Spring 2014 27

as a speaker and radio personality was pivotal inbringing Catholics into “the national dialogue”on religious and political topics of the day.Little Rome and Catholic University were “thematrix for that transformation,” she notes.“Catholics had pretty much been excluded

at the national level,” says Mazzenga. FusingCatholic and American ideals in a fatherly way,“he instilled in them a sense of confidence thatenabled their inclusion into American society.” In TV episodes available on YouTube and

EWTN, the silver-haired archbishop withpiercing blue eyes is dressed in full clericalgarb, with a scarlet cap and robe. He usuallystarts his talk with a joke and often ends withdramatic hand gestures. His only prop is ablackboard. Sister Maria Frassati notes thatlong before Pope Francis started tweeting,Archbishop Sheen was a “pioneer of the newevangelization,” using the media of radio andTV to spread the word of God.Not always perfect, Archbishop Sheen

struggled at times with pride. In his book onthe archbishop, Thomas C. Reeves notes thatin 1928 the prelate hired a clipping service to document his activities. “He was proud ofthe impression the farm boy from Peoria wasmaking in Catholic circles,” the book notes.In September 1950, Archbishop Sheen

resigned from his teaching position at CatholicUniversity to become national director of theSociety for the Propagation of the Faith. Heled the society until 1966, raising hundreds of millions for missionary activities around theworld and personally donating $10 million ofhis own earnings. That year a falling-out withCardinal Francis Spellman led to ArchbishopSheen’s reassignment as bishop of Rochester,and later he spent much of the last 10 years ofhis life leading retreats for priests.At the January 1980 memorial Mass for

Archbishop Sheen at Caldwell Chapel, hisformer student Rev. Robert Mohan, Ph.D.1947, gave the eulogy. Father Mohan, whodied in 2007, noted that “Archbishop Sheen’sgreatest strength was not in the perfection of his oratory, nor in the breadth of hisvision, nor the extent of his charities, but inthe life of prayer that gave all these lesserthings their meaning.”To learn more about Archbishop Sheen’s life,

visit fulton-sheen.cua.edu.

New Yorkers were surprised when BishopTerence Cooke was appointed the city’sarchbishop in 1968, says Marie Raber,associate dean of the National Catholic Schoolof Social Service, who grew up in the Brooklyndiocese. At the time, he was a relativelyunknown vicar general who had earned hisM.S.W. at Catholic University in 1949.Elevated to cardinal in 1969, he was known

as a humble man who transformed the waythe archdiocese provided services for the poor in New York’s ethnic neighborhoods.“He was a holy man who became one of thegreatest leaders in the Church,” notes Raber.The third and youngest child of Irish

immigrants, Cardinal Cooke was bornMarch 1, 1921, in Manhattan. His parentsnamed their son after Terence MacSwiney,lord mayor of Cork who died on a hungerstrike during the Irish War of Independence.Cardinal Cooke’s mother passed away whenhe was just nine. Ordained a priest on Dec. 1,1945, he served as chaplain at Saint Agatha’sHome for Children in New York beforegoing to Catholic University for his graduatestudies.

As cardinal, he founded the archdiocesanpaper, Catholic New York; Birthright, whichprovides women alternatives to abortion;Courage Apostolate, a spiritual support systemthat enables gay people to live in accordancewith Church teaching; and an archdiocesanhousing development program that offersaffordable housing to the city’s disadvantaged,among other programs.Diagnosed with cancer in 1965, Cardinal

Cooke maintained a busy schedule despitesurgery and chemotherapy, even after hiscondition became terminal in 1975. Whenhe died on Oct. 6, 1983, the front page of El Diario, New York’s Spanish languagenewspaper, bid him farewell with the words“Adios Amigo.” Mourners spilled out of St.Patrick’s, surrounding the cathedral as he layin state. Cardinal Cooke’s “authenticity is a treasure

he gives to us,” notes Will Rainford, dean of social work. “He embodies the kind ofstudent we educate at our school and servesas a role model for social workers. His life isthe perfect marriage of social work values andthe tradition of Catholic social teaching.”

In 1963, Rev. Victor Hoagland, C.P., wasliving with his religious community in Romewhile studying for a doctorate in theology.Hearing that some of his friends wereplanning to visit the Holy Land, he askedFather Theodore Foley, C.P., then thePassionists’ general consultor, if he could go.Later, the older priest, crestfallen, approachedhim, saying, “Victor, I have bad news. I’mafraid you can’t go.” Father Hoagland chuckles

at the recollection. “I think he felt worse thanI did.” After he was elected the Passionists’ superior

general in 1964, Father Foley represented hisworldwide order at two sessions of the SecondVatican Council. He led his order with humor,kindness, and unwavering faith, travelingconstantly, writing letters, and meeting withfellow priests who were troubled by changestaking place in the Church after Vatican II.

“He was a wonderful, holy man, but you werenever in awe of him because he was somodest,” notes Father Hoagland, who earnedhis S.T.L. at CUA in 1961 and serves as ahistorian for Father Foley’s cause.In a biography of Father Foley, Father

Hoagland notes that for a man who“preferred a quiet peaceful pace … who lovedthe past and found contentment in thereligious life he had led, the changes thatfollowed Vatican II had to be difficult.” But,he was also “a futurist,” who took up the taskof helping to move the Church forwardwithout question or complaint.Father Foley was born March 3, 1913, in

Springfield, Mass., the son of devout Irish-American Catholic parents. At 14, he enteredthe Passionist community, which sent him toCatholic University. In a letter to his sister,Marie, he wrote that the University “is onegrand inter-association of laity, religious andclergy. There are religious habits on display I have never seen before.” After earning alicentiate in sacred theology in 1943 and a doctorate in sacred theology in 1944, hetaught seminarians for eight years.Rev. Timothy Fitzgerald, C.P., Father

Foley’s secretary in the mid-1960s, describeshim as an insightful man with a “big map ofan Irish face” who was “a strong spiritualforce.” When Father Foley served at thePassionist monastery in Pittsburgh, he was aspiritual mentor for friends with specialneeds and stayed in touch with them evenwhile serving as superior general. In Rome,he was a confessor to many bishops.In the last year of his life, he contracted

a parasite while traveling in the South Sea off the coast of Australia. It went to his heart, causing an infection that led to hisunexpected death in Rome on Oct. 9, 1974,at the age of 61. At the time of Father Foley’s death, the

Passionist provincial, Rev. Flavian Dougherty,C.P., said of him that with change occurring,“it is necessary to have a man so strong that hecan be a peacemaker, so secure that he can beconfronted with the most troublesome eventsand people and yet be gentle, so trusting thathe can be nondirective and still effect change.Above all, so prayerful that he can use thepower of God instead of his own.”

A Social Workerfor New York’s Poor

CARDINAL TERENCE COOKE, SERVANT OF GOD

A Peacemaker Who Led in the Days After Vatican II

REV. THEODORE FOLEY, SERVANT OF GOD

Spring 2014 2928 The Catholic University of America Magazine

Chinese guards at POW Camp No. 5 nearPyoktong in North Korea were fed up withthe U.S. Army chaplain, Rev. Emil Kapaun.Since his capture, he had defied themrepeatedly by holding prayer services for themen in his care. Even worse, he was unfazed,even serene, when they taunted him abouthis Catholic faith. In late May 1951, theguards ordered that he be taken to the deathhouse near the prison camp. Knowing that hewould die there, Father Kapaun’s men pleadedwith the guards to let him stay. They refused.Like a pallbearer at a funeral, Lt. Bob Wood

was one of four men who picked up the litterthat held Father Kapaun. Wasting away fromdysentery, pneumonia, and a blood clot thathad caused his leg to swell, the priest smiledand blessed his captors, saying, “Forgive them,Father, for they know not what they do.”Wood, then 23, says he wept as he carried thepriest, who “stood out like a bright light in adark room.” Just 35 when he died on May 23, 1951,

Father Kapaun was buried in an unmarkedgrave near the Manchurian border, over-looking the Yalu River. But his good workslived on in his men. Lt. William Funchessstarted nightly readings of the 23rd Psalm for his fellow prisoners, note Wichita Eagle

journalists Roy Wenzl and Travis Heying intheir book, The Miracle of Father Kapaun:Priest, Soldier, and Korean War Hero. Anotherprisoner led the men in saying the rosary, as the priest had done. Cpl. Bob McGreevy,left to die by the Chinese, prayed to FatherKapaun for the strength to recover, accordingto the book.When the Korean War ended and the

POWs were released, a band of Americansoldiers emerged from Camp No. 5 with awooden crucifix on which Christ wore acrown of thorns made of barbed wire. Thecross honored the priest who had washedtheir ragged clothes, picked lice off theirbodies, and stolen food to keep them alive.In a 1954 Saturday Evening Post story, 1st

Lt. Mike Dowe notes that the priest was “aman of great piety,” but there was nothing“holier-than-thou” about him. Dowe saysthat Father Kapaun, who could be “rough of speech sometimes,” once remarked thatwhen American troops came to liberate thecamp, he was going to catch a certainChinese officer “and kick his butt right overthe compound fence.”The son of Czech immigrants, Father

Kapaun had grown up on a farm near ruralPilsen, Kan. Nearly six feet tall with gray eyes

and a dimpled chin, the priest urged his men to endure their sufferings, as Christ haddone, giving them hope and courage as theyawaited their release from the camp.Wood, Dowe, and other former POWs

began lobbying the Army to bestow theMedal of Honor on Father Kapaun. On April11, 2013, President Barack Obama awardedthe medal for conspicuous gallantry to theArmy captain from the Wichita diocese whoearned a master’s degree in education atCatholic University in 1948. At a movingceremony in the East Room of the WhiteHouse, Obama presented the award to thepriest’s nephew. The medal honors Father Kapaun’s extra-

ordinary heroism on Nov. 1 and 2, 1950,while serving with the 3rd Battalion, 8thCavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Divisionduring combat operations at Unsan, Korea.The medal citation notes that “when

Chinese Communist forces viciously attackedfriendly elements, Chaplain Kapaun calmlywalked through withering enemy fire inorder to provide comfort and medical aid to his comrades.” Though ordered toevacuate, Father Kapaun stayed behind withthe wounded. “Shortly after his capture,Chaplain Kapaun bravely pushed aside anenemy soldier preparing to execute a comrade,thus saving a life … ”At the White House, Obama said, “This

is the valor we honor today, an Americansoldier who didn’t fire a gun, but who wieldedthe mightiest weapon of all, the love for hisbrothers so pure that he was willing to die forthem.” Listening to the president were FatherKapaun’s POW comrades Dowe, Wood, andHerb Miller, the man whom Father Kapaun

had rescued from an enemy soldier’s gun. At the ceremony, the former POWs greeted

Rev. John Hotze, who leads the cause forFather Kapaun’s canonization. Father Hotze,who has interviewed the men extensively,started looking into the life of the chaplain in 2001. The diocese opened its officialinvestigation in 2008.Rev. Gerard Sloyan, S.T.L. 1944, Ph.D.

1948, a retired Catholic University theologyprofessor, was also in the audience. FatherSloyan, who was working on his doctorate ineducation at the same time that Father Kapaunwas studying for his master’s, recalls that thepriest “was widely liked and admired.” Father Kapaun’s bishop had sent him to

Washington to become a teacher, but thepriest had found his calling as a militarychaplain. He had already served as a chaplainin Burma and India during World War II.After earning his master’s, he served briefly asthe pastor of a Kansas parish, and then askedhis bishop if he could reenlist.Though Father Kapaun lies in an unmarked

grave, he is memorialized at the Pentagon,where his name is engraved on a plaque in theHall of Heroes. When the proposed NationalMuseum of the United States Army is built, apicture of Father Kapaun and a brief accountof his story will appear on one of severalvertical, freestanding displays outside themuseum, says Clayton Newell, historian andretired lieutenant colonel. The display text will quote Father Kapaun,

who noted in his modest way that “men find it easy to follow one who has endearedhimself to them.”

Editor’s NoteOther than their degrees, little is known aboutthe time that Rev. Eduardo Farre Masip,O.C.D., and Rev. Antonio Varona Ortega, O.P.,spent at the University. A prior of the CarmeliteMonastery in the Brookland neighborhood ofWashington, D.C., Father Masip earned aBachelor of Sacred Theology and a License ofSacred Theology in 1928. Father Ortega, whostudied at the Dominican House of Studies inD.C. in the early 1920s, earned a master’sdegree in philosophy in 1926. Both martyredin 1936 by Communist forces during theSpanish Civil War, they have been beatified.

A Chaplain Who Wielded the Mightiest Weapon

REV. EMIL KAPAUN, SERVANT OF GOD

The Path to SainthoodThe canonization process begins at the diocesan level at least five years after thecandidate’s death. This practice dates back to ancient times when families wouldgather and share a meal in honor of the deceased, notes Rev. Michael Witczak,associate professor of liturgical studies and sacramental theology. The earliest exampleof a community honoring a revered person is from the city of Smyrna, wherePolycarp, a second-century Christian bishop, had been burned at the stake. The diocesan bishop initiates the cause by petitioning the Vatican and appointing

a local investigator to gather testimony about the person’s life. The Congregation forthe Causes of Saints officially opens a cause, as it did in September 2002 when itnamed Archbishop Fulton Sheen a Servant of God. The testimony collected as part of the investigation of his life filled 15,000 pages,

used to create a positio, or two-volume position paper, laying out the case forsainthood. Monsignor Stanley Deptula, executive director of the Archbishop FultonJohn Sheen Foundation, and his bishop presented the positio to Pope Benedict XVI inMay 2011. The congregation then concurred that Archbishop Sheen possessed trulyheroic virtue and the Pope declared him venerable.The next step, beatification, requires the verification of a miracle. Once the

candidate is beatified, the Vatican requires a second miracle for canonization. (For amartyr, only one miracle is required.) As part of Rev. Emil Kapaun’s cause, the Wichitadiocese is investigating several possible miracles, including Chase Kear’s recovery from a serious head injury, the result of a pole vaulting accident in 2008. Initiallyunresponsive and on life support, Kear has recovered, an outcome his neurosurgeondescribes as miraculous. Kear’s family and friends believe he recovered because theyprayed to Father Kapaun.“The Church acknowledges that saints have extraordinary powers of intercession

because they have a privileged place before God,” notes Father Witczak. Saints alsoserve as role models of virtuous living, he says. “As Catholics, I think we look for a storyline for our lives. The life of a saint can serve as an inspiration to our own life’s journey.” When Pope Francis announced that two of his predecessors would be canonized

this April, the Vatican noted their commitment to peace and their impact on theChurch and the wider world during times of cultural, political, and religious change.The Church canonizes saints of varying ages at different periods in history, so “thereare many examples that we can emulate in own path of holiness,” says Father Witczak.“We are all called to be saints. We all hope to get to heaven.”

“We are all called to be saints.

We all hope to get to heaven.”

Raymond Skeehan via Catholic Diocese of Wichita

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