The Cause for
Servant of God
Brother Marinus, O.S.B.
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Volume 5, #8 December 13, 2022 |
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May God's Blessings be with all of you in the holy time of Advent. May this time of preparation call us to focus on the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In this newsletter, I will be sharing:
- The new movie, "The Birth," about the first Korean priest;
- The new Korean play, "The Miracle of SS Meredith Victory"
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Where the SS Meredith Victory was 52 years ago today.
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The Birth: A feature Film about the foundation of the Catholic Church in Korea and its 1st Priest Martyr |
As the website MyDramaList describes: "The film deals in depth with the patience and courage of Kim Dae Gun, a young man who had to create his own hope, his willingness to throw his body, and his love for God and man that he showed throughout his life."
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A New Korean Play Premiers: The Miracle of the SS Meredith Victory |
Our friend of the Cause of Brother Marinus, kyung Ae Jeon, sent me a collection of photos which she took at the performance of The Miracle of the Meredith Victory.
When more information is known about the play, and the possibility of its performance in the US, I will pass them on to you.
Below are a collection of photos that Jeon sent to me.
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What was going on in Hungnam 52 years ago today! |
Drawing from Phillip Lacovara's biography of Captain Leonard La Rue, The Mariner & the Monk, we learn that a big section of the US Marines X Corp was evacuated
"As it turned out, the decision to evacuate the Marines first was well-founded. The senior medical officer aboard the General Collins commented that, “seventy five (75) percent” of the troops evacuated from Hungnam “suffered one or more respiratory complaints.” The chaplain’s report for the Collins said,
“On Wednesday, 13 December we sailed from Hungnam for Pusan, Korea. On board were … 4,826 Marines. A part of those remaining who had fought their way out of the trap at the Chosen [sic] Reservoir. I was told later by Army personnel ashore that staging areas had been set up to receive these men when they got in, but they did not stop. They marched right on by to board small craft waiting to bring them to the ship. Sick call was a nearly twenty-four (24) hour a day project for the ship’s medical department and the USN doctors attached to the Marines. Nearly every man needed some kind of medical attention.”
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Fr. Paul Kim, The Incheon Landing, and the Cause of Servant of God Brother Marinus |
On October 2, 2022, I set up the exhibit for the cause of Servant of God Brother Marinus/Captain Leonard La Rue at the XXV Stella Maris World Congress in Glasgow, Scotland.
Soon after, Fr. Paul Kim, Stella Maris - Inchon port chaplain, came to the table. It was the first time that I met him, and I explained that Captain Leonard La Rue had rescued 14,000 North Koreans during Christmas 1950.
Fr. Kim was familiar with Christmas miracle, and was interested in the cause. What he was not familiar with was La Rue’s actions in his home port of Inchon, fifty-two years before.
The Meredith Victory was one of 19 merchant vessels that sailed from Yokohama as part of the Second Echelon. This convoy later would be joined by other vessels to form General MacArthur’s Inchon Landing armada.
Phillip Lacovara describes voyage from Yokahoam to Inchon in his book The Mariner & The Monk:
“On September 13 another hurricane, Typhoon Kezia, roared across southern Japan with winds of sixty-seven miles per hour, striking the islands of Honshu and Kyushu....The storm struck the Second Echelon as the convoy from Yokohama was crossing south of Kyushu at ten knots into the Sea of Japan.
“None of the ships had easy going that night. For the Meredith Victory, on station at the right rear of the formation and top heavy with tanks and trucks on its deck, the fifty-foot swell and the sixty-mile-per-hour wind from the port quarter rolled the ship alarmingly. Junior Third Officer Burley Smith was in the process of relieving Second Mate Al Golembeski from his watch when the two officers watched with considerable concern as the ship rolled to starboard and hung healed over. Chains securing the deck cargo started to break, with several tanks sliding until they stopped against the starboard bulwark. The ship slowly righted itself and resumed rolling back to port, some of the trucks now sliding across the deck, the shrouds from the ship’s cranes cutting into their canvas roofs and injuring the soldiers inside. Top heavy with loose cargo, Meredith Victory was in danger of capsizing.
“Before he could call the captain in his cabin a deck below, Smith found that La Rue had already braved the violent rolls to climb the ladder and was standing beside him. Silently timing the waves and the motion of the ship for a few moments, La Rue calmly ordered the helmsman, ‘Hard left rudder,’ and told Smith to order ‘Full ahead” on the engine-order telegraph. No one spoke as the ship slowly turned through the perilous point where the seas were on the beam. When the ship steadied on course with a small angle to the wind and waves, the captain ordering ‘Slow ahead’ to keep the Meredith Victory pointing into the sea, waiting out the storm as it moved past. In the moment, the junior third mate would have turned the ship to starboard, in the direction of the tanks loose against the bulwark, but La Rue, with almost two decades at sea and months of stormy weather under his belt, knew that the time saved in getting the ship around into the wind and out of the quartering sea was most important. Reflecting on the decision almost seventy years later, Smith pointed to this event as an example of Captain La Rue’s calm under pressure and expert seamanship.
“As the storm passed a few hours later and the winds and seas calmed, the Meredith Victory resumed her course for Inchon. Meredith Victory arrived at her assigned anchorage three hours late, but with her cargo and crew intact.”
On September 16, 1950, Captain La Rue was ordered to bring his ship into Inchon harbor, and begin unloading their cargo of tanks and trucks onto to landing craft to be transported ashore.
By the grace of God and the skill of Captain La Rue, the Meredith Victory was saved from capsizing, and her crew and dozens soldiers were saved from certain death.
As the cause moves forward, I look forward working with Fr. Kim in spreading the word about Captain La Rue/Brother Marinus among the South Korean Catholic Community.
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Leonard LaRue, Rescuer in the Korean War,
Dies at 87
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
OCT. 20, 2001
Brother Marinus Leonard LaRue, who as a merchant marine captain in the Korean War evacuated 14,000 refugees from a besieged North Korean port, died on Sunday at St. Paul's Abbey in Newton, N.J. Brother Marinus, who became a Benedictine monk after two decades at sea, was 87.
Three days before Christmas 1950, Captain LaRue came upon what he likened to ''a scene of Dante's Inferno'' at the port. On Christmas Day, he delivered all 14,000 refugees to safety on a South Korean island some 500 miles away aboard a freighter designed to hold only 60 people. The United States Maritime Administration called his feat ''the greatest rescue by a single ship in the annals of the sea.''
Captain LaRue was the skipper of the 455-foot Meredith Victory, a Moore-McCormack Lines freighter that had been carrying supplies to American servicemen in Korea on behalf of the Navy.
In December 1950, the Meredith Victory was summoned to the North Korean port Hungnam, which was jammed with 105,000 American and South Korean marines and soldiers and more than 90,000 North Korean civilians retreating from a Chinese Communist onslaught at the Chosin Reservoir. About 200 American vessels had converged on Hungnam for evacuation while American ships and planes bombarded the perimeter to hold off Communist troops. Continue reading the main story
''I trained my binoculars and saw a pitiable scene,'' Captain LaRue remembered. ''Refugees thronged the docks. With them was everything they could wheel, carry or drag. Beside them, like frightened chicks, were their children.''
On the night of Dec. 22, the Meredith Victory began taking aboard a stream of refugees who feared they would be killed by Communist troops, who regarded them as American sympathizers for having fled their homes.
''There were families with 8 and 10 children,'' Captain LaRue remembered. ''There was a man with a violin, a woman with a sewing machine, a young girl with triplets. There were 17 wounded, some stretcher cases, many who were aged, hundreds of babies. Finally, as the sun rode high the next morning, we had 14,000 human beings jammed aboard. It was impossible, and yet they were there.''
The refugees were crammed into the cargo holds of a freighter that held 47 crewmen and was designed to carry about a dozen passengers.
The Meredith Victory headed for the South Korean port Pusan, 28 hours away, traveling through heavily mined waters that were patrolled by enemy submarines.
The refugees had little food or water and there were no blankets or sanitary facilities. The crewmen gave their coats to the women and children, but the misery was unrelieved. At one point, young men came topside seeking food, and a riot seemed imminent.
After a treacherous voyage though the Sea of Japan, the freighter arrived at Pusan on Christmas Eve, only to be turned away by South Korean officials, who were trying to cope with refugees already there. Captain LaRue was told to head for the island of Koje Do, 50 miles to the southwest.
The Meredith Victory arrived at the island on Christmas. But the dock was small and crowded, so the freighter had to remain on the open sea for a third frigid night. The next day, two LST's -- Navy ships designed to land tanks onshore during combat -- were lashed to the freighter, and the refugees climbed onto them and finally made it to safety.
Not one refugee died in the evacuation; the number of Koreans aboard had, in fact, increased by five babies.
Captain LaRue, a Philadelphia native and a veteran of World War II merchant marine operations in the Atlantic, remained in command of the Meredith Victory until it was decommissioned in 1952. He received American and South Korean government citations for his rescue work, and the Meredith Victory was designated a Gallant Ship by Congress.
In 1954, he left the sea to join the Benedictines at St. Paul's Abbey, where he lived until his death. He left no immediate survivors.
''I was always somewhat religious,'' he reflected a decade after carrying out the Korean evacuation. ''All the things in my life helped to cement my determination to enter the monastery.''
But he looked back on the rescue as a turning point in his life.
As he put it: ''I think often of that voyage. I think of how such a small vessel was able to hold so many persons and surmount endless perils without harm to a soul. The clear, unmistakable message comes to me that on that Christmastide, in the bleak and bitter waters off the shores of Korea, God's own hand was at the helm of my ship.''
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American Merchant Marine Veterans News |
The latest issue of the AMMV News carries an article that I wrote on Second Mate Leonard La Rue on the SS Mormacmar in March of 1942. He was with other ships north of Reykjavik, Iceland in preparation for PQ-13.
I hope you enjoy it.
Blessings,
Fr. Sinclair Oubre
Diocesan Director
Stella Maris - Diocese of Beaumont
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Updating the Prayer for the Cause of Servant of God Brother Marinus |
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A big thank you to Bishop Sweeney of the Diocese of Paterson, New Jersey for updating our prayer for the cause of Servant of God Brother Marinus, OSB.
Since we began this cause, I have learned that it is imperative that we demonstrate to the Decastery for the Causes of Saints that:
- Many Catholic faithful actively ask for the intercession of Servant of God Brother Marinus;
- Stories of the active answering of request for intercessions are collected to demonstrate his intercessional power.
With that in mind, Bishop Sweeney had approved the update of the prayer that adds the line: "Through his intercession, grant the favor I now present (here make your request)."
If you pray for the intercession of Servant of God Brother Marinus, and you believe that his intercession helped in the healing of a loved one, finding a job, brought about safe travels, or other simple spiritual helps, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, send us a short story, and the date the intercession was requested. I keep a spreadsheet, and that will greatly help when the cause gets to the Holy See.
If you would like copies of the new prayer cards or you wish to report the intercessions of Servant of God Brother Marinus, you can:
Mail to: The Cause of Servant of God Brother Marinus
1500 Jefferson Drive
Port Arthur, Texas 77642
Fr. Sinclair Oubre, J.C.L., AFNI
Stella Maris - Diocese of Beaumont
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Two Styles of the New Prayer Card |
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A special message from the St. Paul's Abbey's Abbot |
Dear Fr. Sinclair and the members of the guild.
Thank you, Fr. Sinclair, for organizing today’s virtual meeting. It’s important that we keep the momentum for the cause of Br. Marinus going and it’s small activities like this that really help. Unfortunately I couldn’t attend today’s meeting. I am very sorry and felt sad.
I thank to Father and the Apostolate of the Sea. I also would like to thank everyone who took part in the special event for Br. Marinus that we had here at St. Paul’s Abbey last August. It was a wonderful event and it was terrific to see everyone. It meant a lot to me and the brothers here at the monastery. Br. Marinus is a great example to us of monastic fidelity, and as a community mostly of Korean ethnicity, a hero of our people and a special figure in our history. It truly warms our hearts to have people recognize our confrere, Br. Marinus, and make such efforts for his cause.
As I had mentioned in that August meeting, we here at St. Paul’s Abbey pray for the cause of Br. Marinus every day at complines. I do hope that all of you will join us in this prayer and encourage others to do so as well. In prayer, we recognize that it is God’s work in us, and that we are seeking God’s will as we share the story of Br. Marinus with the world.
Once again, thank you for all your efforts. It’s truly awesome to think that one of our own, by his heroic actions inspired of faith and charity, gave life and hope to so many. Br. Marinus has touched our lives and inspired us. Let us pray that with our cooperation with God’s grace that Br. Marinus’ story will continue to inspire and encourage many in the Church and the wider world. Thank you.
In the Love of Jesus Christ,
Fr. Samuel Kim, OSB
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Bishop Kevin Sweeney, the diocesan bishop of Paterson, New Jersey, appeared on Catholic New Headlines of the Diocese of Brooklyn to speak about the cause of Servant of God Brother Marinus. |
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On Wednesday, August 11, Gene Wilhelm talked with Fr. Sinclair Oubre about two American Catholics with a military background who are on the path to sainthood. He is the postulator for the cause of Brother Marinus, born Leonard LaRue, who was a Korean War hero who rescued over 14,000 Korean civilians from communist rule during Christmastime 1950–51. This incredible feat has been described by Richard Goldstein of the New York Times as the "largest humanitarian rescue operation by a single ship in human history."
Our guest also spoke for a few minutes about the life and the path to canonization of Fr. Emil Kapaun, a Korean War soldier and chaplain who sacrificed his life in order to save the lives of many men in his prison camp. Fr. Oubre is the Pastor at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Community in Orange, Texas. Enjoy this journey into a fascinating corner of the American Catholic story! And remember when choosing between the values of heaven and the values of earth, always round up!
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Meet Father LaFleur and Brother Marinus
by Brian Fraga
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Brother Marinus
As a Benedectine monk, Brother Marinus never once in 50 years spoke about his exploits during the Korean War that saved 14,000 Korean refugees.
“He never talked about what he did. Anybody who lived with him will tell you that. And he didn’t want to talk about it,” said Benedictine Father Joel Macul, who lived with Brother Marinus at St. Paul’s Benedictine Abbey in Newton, New Jersey.
“If you asked him about it, he would simply say, ‘Well, you weren’t there so you wouldn’t understand.’ That was the end of the conversation. But that’s not unusual for anybody who has had any experience or trauma of war. People don’t talk about it, except to other guys who were there,” Father Macul told Our Sunday Visitor.
In December 1950, Brother Marinus was Capt. Leonard LaRue, the skipper of the 455-foot Meredith Victory, a freighter carrying military supplies to American servicemen in northeast Korea.
Three days before Christmas, Capt. LaRue, a Philadelphia native, came upon what he later likened to a scene out of Dante’s Inferno at the North Korean port city of Hungnam. There he saw thousands of Korean refugees retreating from a Chinese Communist onslaught at the Chosin Reservoir.....
NB: Servant of God Brother Marinus' story is in the second half of this article.
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National Catholic Register:
Heroic Mariner-Monk Sails for Sainthood: Servant of God Marinus LaRue
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Navy League's Weekly Report Highlights Cause!
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AMMV News Magazine Feature:
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It All Could Have Been So Different!
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Dear Guild Members and Friends of the Cause of Servant of God Brother Marinus,
My apologies for not sending out a newsletter for quite a while now. I will just say that things have been very busy on the parish and maritime ministry levels.
This has been a great day for the cause for Servant of God Brother Marinus. During today's session of our US Bishops Conference General Assembly, Bishop Sweeney of Paterson, New Jersey presented the cause of Servant of God Brother Marinus to the United States bishops for their endorsement. They voted 99% with no abstentions or negative votes to endorse our cause.
Blessings,
Fr. Sinclair Oubre, J.C.L., AFNI
Diocesan Director
Stella Maris - Diocese of Beaumont
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In this interview with Fr. Sinclair Oubre (Stella Maris - Diocese of Beaumont) and Doreen Badeaux (Apostleship of the Sea USA), Phil share the story of Captain Leonard La Rue and the crew of the SS Meredith Victory on the 70th anniversary of the initiation of the loading of 14,000 North Korean refugees at Hungnam, North Korea. |
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Please raise up in prayer, asking for the intercession of Servant of God Brother Marinus for the Episcopal Delegate for the Cause of Servant of God Brother Marinus. He recently suffered a heart attack and a stroke, and is in very serious condition.
Please raise up in prayer, asking for the intercession of the Chairman of the Historical Commission. He underwent heart surgery before Christmas, and is recovering well.
The prayer prayer for the intercessions of Servant of God Brother Marinus is at the bottom of this newsletter!
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Ned Forney with his wife Jodi are Americans living in Seoul, South Korea. Ned has done great work in chronicling the Korean War, and the great men and women who took part in it. You can read read Ned's writings by visiting his web page at: http://nedforney.com.
While taking the Seoul subway to the park, they came across the above poster.
To Ned's and Jodi's surprise Captain Leonard La Rue had been named Korean War Hero of the month of December. This is so appropriate on the 70th anniversary of the Christmas Miracle.
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New Biography of Captain Leonard LaRue/Brother Marinus published!"
The Mariner and the Monk: Captain LaRue, Brother Marinus, and the Rescue at Hungnam
by Phillip Lacovara
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The Mariner and the Monk tells the story of Captain Leonard La Rue, a brave officer in the Merchant Marine, a Benedictine monk, and the reason tens of thousands of Koreans are alive today and live in freedom. (from Amazon.com)
The book, at this writing, is available in Kindle format for $9.99. Later this week, printed editions will be available through Amazon.
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The SS Meredith Victory's near disasterous participation in the Inchon Landing Convoy: September 1950
Want to see more about the SS Meredith Victory? Watch our earlier MaritimeTV video presentation on the Meredith Victory's participation in General MacArthur's Inchon Landing.
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Prayer for the Cause of
Servant of God Brother Marinus
God, our Father, Creator of the seas, Protector of refugees, and all those in need,
You called Captain Leonard LaRue to recognize Your Son Jesus Christ in the faces of the Korean refugees, and led him as Brother Marinus to a life of prayer and service in the tradition of St. Benedict.
May his life be an inspiration to us, and lead us to greater confidence in Your love so that we may continue his work of caring for the people of the sea, welcoming those who are refugees from war, and deepening all the faithful in their prayer and work of service.
We humbly ask that You glorify Your servant Captain Leonard LaRue/Brother Marinus on earth according to the design of Your holy will, and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Through Christ our Lord.
AMEN
Nihil Obstat: Rev. T. Kevin Corcoran
Censor Liborium Date: August 1, 2017
Imprimatur: + Arthur Serratelli
Bishop of Paterson Date: August 1, 2017
Decree Initiating Cause: + Arthur Serratelli
Bishop of Paterson Date: March 25, 2019
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I Want To Join
the Servant of God Brother Marinus Guild
You can help promote the Cause of Servant of God Bother Marinus by:
- Praying the prayer for Servant of God Brother Marinus each day
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Ask for the intercession of Servant of God Brother Marinus for temporal or physical needs that you or a loved one have. If you believe that your petition has been answered through the intercession of Brother Marinus, please notify us at the Cause for Servant of God Brother Marinus at [email protected].
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Make a tax deductible donation to the Apostleship of the Sea of the United States of America (the petitioning association of the Christian faithful) for $50.00 or more each year. Go to: https://aosusa.americommerce.com/general-donations-to-aos-usa-clone.aspx
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