Redemptorist History: Fr. Larry was "the Champ" to His Troops
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November 30, 2021Between 1939 and September 1941, Father Larry Lynch called the St. Clement Mission House his home, but he was hardly ever there. A man of restless temperament, his main responsibility was to preach missions throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
He had already been a missionary in Paraguay and Brazil, done work with labor organizations in Buffalo, New York, and ministered to Black Catholics in a rural parish in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Yet his crowning achievement, at least the one for which he won the most fame, was as an exemplary Army chaplain during the Second World War.
Lynch had a rollicking personality. Eclectic in his tastes, as a student he exhibited a remarkable talent for poetry, painting, and baseball. He used his ability with words to cajole and befriend, and his straight-talk cut to the things that matter. He had a square jaw and a thick frame, which he carried with a gregarious swagger. He could often be found clinching a cigar between an affable grin.
Father Lynch was a priest to Everyman. When he told his mother that he was going to enter the Chaplain Corps, she wondered why when he was doing such good work from St. Clement’s Mission House. His reply was true to his character: “Mom, the Army is one unending mission for a Chaplain.”
Born in Brooklyn on October 17, 1906, Father Lynch entered the Redemptorist preparatory seminary at North East, Pennsylvania in August 1919. He was accepted into the Redemptorist novitiate at Ilchester, Maryland, where he eventually pronounced his vows on August 2, 1927. Five years later he was ordained at Mount St. Alphonsus in Esopus, New York, by Patrick Cardinal Hayes and gave himself over to missionary life.
His commission as an Army chaplain came in September 1941 and his first posting that November was to Camp Wheeler, Georgia, where he was attached to the 8th Infantry. His next three assignments were with the 7th Armored Division which brought him to the swamps of Louisiana and training in the Mojave Desert. He shipped out to the Pacific theater in December 1943 and was stationed at the Headquarters Service Command at New Caledonia until February 1945.
His men called him “the Champ” partly due to his zeal on behalf of individual GI’s and partly for his organizational ability. While in New Caledonia he brought together a mammoth twelve-priest mission that drew 15,000 from all the command posts on the island. He inaugurated a broadcast called The Catholic Hour which was sent over the island’s mosquito network. He gave each man he met a holy card depicting Our Lady of Perpetual Help and many later recalled how she protected them from harm.
From New Caledonia he joined the 165th Infantry Regiment—what had been known as the “Fighting 69th” (New York’s Irish Brigade)—and was a front line chaplain on the Island of Okinawa. For his gallantry in action against the enemy at Okinawa, Shima, Nansei Shoto, between April 21 and 24, 1945, he received the Silver Star and the Purple Heart. He was mortally wounded by an exploding shell on April 24 and died on the battlefield while ministering to his men.
Father Lynch was buried hurriedly on Okinawa, almost one hundred days before the Japanese surrender on August 15. After the hostilities on Okinawa were brought to heel, fifty Catholic chaplains returned to his grave site and, on the hoods of fifty jeeps, simultaneously chanted a Mass of Requiem before a congregation of 3,000. His remains were later translated for burial from the Redemptorist parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Brooklyn, New York. Captain Lawrence Edward Lynch, C.Ss.R., is interred in the Redemptorist Cemetery at Mount St. Alphonsus in Esopus, New York.
(Courtesy of Baltimore Beacon.)
