The Saint Makers
Inside the Catholic Church and How a War Hero Inspired a Journey of Faith
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- £7.99
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
Part biography of a wartime adventurer, part detective story, and part faith journey, this intriguing book from a New York Times journalist and bestselling author takes us inside the modern-day making of a saint.
The Saint Makers chronicles the unlikely alliance between Father Hotze and Dr. Andrea Ambrosi, a country priest and a cosmopolitan Italian canon lawyer, as the two piece together the life of a long dead Korean War hero and military chaplain and fashion it into a case for eternal divinity. Joe Drape offers a front row seat to the Catholic Church's saint-making machinery—which, in many ways, has changed little in two thousand years-and examines how, or if, faith and science can co-exist.
This rich and unique narrative leads from the plains of Kansas to the opulent halls of the Vatican, through brutal Korean War prison camps, and into the stories of two individuals, Avery Gerleman and Chase Kear, whose lives were threatened by illness and injury and whose family and friends prayed to Father Kapaun, sparking miraculous recoveries in the heart of America. Gerleman is now a nurse, and Kear works as a mechanic in the aerospace industry. Both remain devoted to Father Kapaun, whose opportunity for sainthood relies in their belief and medical charts. At a time when the church has faced severe scandal and damage, and the world is at the mercy of a pandemic, this is an uplifting story about a priest who continues to an example of goodness and faith.
Ultimately, The Saint Makers is the story of a journey of faith—for two priests separated by seventy years, for the two young athletes who were miraculously brought back to life with (or without) the intercession of the divine, as well as for readers—and the author—trying to understand and accept what makes a person truly worthy of the Congregation of Saints in the eyes of the Catholic Church.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sportswriter Drape (American Pharaoh) provides an illuminating exploration of the heroism of Korean War military chaplain Emil Kapaun (1916 1951) and ongoing efforts to canonize him in this meandering history-cum-memoir. Kapaun received a posthumous Medal of Honor for his efforts to look after the troops he was assigned to even after he was captured by the Chinese. Eventually, an ailing Kapaun, who was viewed by his captors as an ideological threat, was taken away from his fellow POWs and died alone. In 1999, Fr. John Hotze, inspired by Kapaun's commitment to his faith and to his fellow captives, began amassing evidence in support of Kapaun's candidacy as a saint. This led, in 2020, to a scheduled discussion of his worthiness that was derailed by the Covid-19 pandemic. As Drape researched Kapaun and the elaborate processes the Catholic church has for assessing potential saints his own faith in the power of miracles was bolstered by miraculous medical recoveries, such as that of 12-year-old Avery Gerleman, who Drape believes was saved from mysterious organ failure years ago due to her father's prayers to Kapaun. Unfortunately, the shifts to Drape's own experiences, which include an extended account of his Catholic upbringing, tend to distract from Kapaun's story and the otherwise moving account of courage and faith in the killing fields of Korea. Faith-minded history buffs will best appreciate this.