Thank you for joining us for the First Liberty Briefing, an exclusive podcast where host Jeremy Dys—also First Liberty Senior Counsel—provides an insider’s look at the stories, cases, people and laws that have made America the world’s leader in protecting religious liberty.
Father Joseph O’Callahan was eating breakfast when his world was rattled on March 19, 1945. O’Callahan was a Chaplain on the USS Franklin. He had just come from praying with the pilots about to embark on the day’s mission, when suddenly the entire ship shuttered from Japanese bombs landing on the deck.
O’Callahan ran to the decks, finding wounded and dying sailors scattered about. Ignoring the debris and raging fires, he prayed with the wounded and offered last rights to the dying. He ordered blankets to be brought for the wounded lying on the cold deck. His own leg had been gashed, but he ignored it when he realized that the fires raging toward the ship’s magazine.
He personally helped throw overboard dozens of bombs that were so hot that they could explode any moment – while organizing other sailors to douse the stacks of 1,000-pound bombs with water to prevent their explosion.
Thanks in large measure to father O’Callahan, the ship did not sink that day and hundreds of lives were saved.
In 1946, President Truman made him the first Chaplain to receive the Medal of Honor for “Serving with courage, fortitude and deep spiritual strength in the face of almost certain death.”
And about that gash on his leg, he finally let a medic bandage him… if he could pray for the medic while he did.
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