Father Vincent Capodanno, M.M.

The Grunt’s Padre

Vincent Robert Capodanno was born on February 13, 1929, on Staten Island, New York, the youngest of nine children in an Italian immigrant family. Quiet and devout from boyhood, he entered Maryknoll Seminary after high school and was ordained a Maryknoll missionary priest on June 1, 1957. He was sent first to Taiwan, where he spent several years learning Mandarin and serving indigenous communities, then to Hong Kong, where he taught in Maryknoll schools.

In 1965, moved by the growing conflict in Southeast Asia and the plight of young Marines far from home, Father Capodanno volunteered for the U.S. Navy Chaplain Corps. He arrived in Vietnam in 1966, assigned to the 1st Marine Division. From the start he was different from the rear-echelon chaplains. He went into the field with his Marines, slept in foxholes, shared their rations, and walked their patrols. The grunts (infantry Marines) called him “the Grunt’s Padre.”

When his first tour ended, Father Capodanno extended. He was reassigned to 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. On September 4, 1967, during Operation Swift in Quang Tin Province, his unit was ambushed by a large North Vietnamese force. Father Capodanno moved through the battlefield, giving last rites, dragging wounded men to safety, and refusing to leave. He was hit multiple times by enemy fire. When he saw a wounded corpsman under direct attack, he threw himself over the young man to shield him. Father Capodanno was killed. He was 38 years old.

On December 27, 1968, Father Capodanno was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his extraordinary heroism. In 2002, the Archdiocese for the Military Services opened his cause for canonization, and in 2006 he was declared a Servant of God. His cause continues to advance. He is remembered not only as a war hero but as a priest who embodied the words of Christ: “Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Timeline