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The Archdiocese for the Military Services USA will honor U.S. Navy Chaplain Father Vincent Capodanno, M.M., who earned the Medal of Honor for his bravery on the battlefield, at a Sept. 4 Memorial Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.
Father Capodanno, a native of Staten Island, lived and died as a martyr serving those who were engaged in front-line combat. The Mass will be offered 46 years to the day the Maryknoll missionary died as a result of 27 bullet wounds. The battle took place on a bloody hillside in Vietnam’s Que Son Valley where outnumbered U.S. Marines fought for their lives, pinned down under ambush by North Vietnamese regulars in “fixed bayonet” combat.
In his book “The Grunt Padre,” Father Daniel L. Mode paints a vivid scene of the attack, quoting survivor accounts of Father Capodanno moving fearlessly around the battlefield, consoling and anointing those in agony and hauling the suffering to safety. Private First Class Julio Rodriguez recalls the moment he first spotted the chaplain. “He was carrying a wounded Marine,” Rodriguez said. “After he brought him to the relative safety of our perimeter, he continued to go back and forth giving Last Rites to dying men and bringing in wounded Marines. He made many trips, telling us to ‘stay cool; don’t panic.’”
Corporal Ray Harton remembers how he lay wounded and bleeding from a gunshot wound to his left arm. “As I closed my eyes, someone touched me,” he said. “When I opened my eyes, he looked directly at me. It was Father Capodanno. Everything got still: no noise, no firing, no screaming. A peace came over me that is unexplainable to this day. In a quiet, calm voice, he cupped the back of my head and said, ‘Stay quiet Marine. You will be OK. Someone will be here to help you soon. God is with us all this day.’”
According to Corporal David Brooks, “The chaplain’s example of action gave courage to everyone who observed him and sparked others to action. Quite a few more people would have died if not for him.” Brooks recalls Father Capodanno suffered his first wound in the right shoulder from mortar shrapnel as he rushed to aid a dying squad leader. Holding his right arm, the priest reached the squad leader’s side, where the two joined in the Lord’s Prayer. Brooks said the chaplain stayed at the man’s side for about five minutes until he died.
Many of the Marines who fought alongside Father Capodanno that day in 1967—a day so hot they recall the rice paddies were like baked concrete—will attend the 6:30 p.m. Memorial Mass.
Tom Slattery, who was a 20-year-old private when he served with the priest, said, “Father Capodanno’s memory has been with me for 46 years now and I ask him every morning and night to join me in prayer.” Tom Byrne, a captain, says he will attend “because I knew him and I feel I have a personal stake in honoring him and what he did.”
“When he said Mass,” Byrne said, “there would always be a lot of Vietnamese who would come to the Mass. He was a priest for everybody.”
Even in death, Father Capodanno inspires courage and hope, drawing supplications from those in need. Some have claimed to experience miracle cures upon seeking the intercession of the hero chaplain. They include a Vietnamese nun whose recovery from advanced cancer came without apparent medical explanation. Some of these accounts are under investigation by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints as the Church considers Father Capodanno’s cause for canonization. He has already been declared a Servant of God, formally initiating the process.
“The Marine Corps could use a saint,” Byrne said, adding, “I hope to go to Rome when he is canonized.”
Taylor Henry is director of public affairs and media relations of the Archdiocese for the Military Services USA.
