This website dedicated to the life and sacrifice of Servant of God Fr. Vincent R. Capodanno, LT, CHC, USNR is an outreach of Mission Capodanno, an organization founded in 2000 under its former name, CatholicMil.org. As a 501.c.3 non-profit corporation, its mission at that time was two fold: to “strengthen military families, promote vocations to the US military chaplaincy.”

That same year, with his thesis on the life of Capodanno published under the title “The Grunt Padre”, Fr. Daniel Lawrence Mode established The Reverend Vincent Robert Capodanno Foundation. The Foundation aimed to make known the previously hidden heroic life and virtue of this Vietnam Medal of Honor and Purple Heart recipient who was KIA while tending to wounded and administering Last Rites to the dying during Operation Swift.

Fr. Mode, then a Navy reserve chaplain and Arlington diocesan priest, was called up to serve in Afghanistan in 2005. Prior to Fr. Mode leaving to serve overseas, the Capodanno Foundation was dissolved and its mission entrusted to CatholicMil. CatholicMil expanded its mission to: “strengthening military families, promote priestly vocations to the US military chaplaincy, and make known Fr. Vincent Capodanno, LT, CHC, USNR.”

In May 2006, on the occasion of the Annual Memorial Day Mass, sponsored by the Archdiocese for Military Services, USA, and held at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC, Rome’s declaration of Fr. Capodanno as “Servant of God” was publicly announced. This Mission Capodanno owned and operated website is a compilation of information shared by those who knew The Grunt Padre and served along side him in the Vietnam War.