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http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012210040364
This fine young man went to high school at Franklin Central in Indy with my with my two oldest kids. His dad was a wrestling coach and teacher and was responsible for getting all my sons involved in wrestling. Just a down to earth great family. Chris is one of the nicest people you would ever meet and always thought first about everyone else before himself. Please say a prayer that he and the translator turn up alive. Thanks
Archdiocesan statement on Father Christiaan Kappes
Father Christiaan Kappes, a priest for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, has been reported missing in Athens, Greece. Father Kappes has been in Athens the past three years at the request of the Vatican working on doctorate degree. We are concerned that Father Kappes' family has not been able to contact him in recent days. The archdiocese also has not been able to locate him. We are praying for the well-being of Father Kappes and his family and for Father Kappes' safe return to the United States. The archdiocese has been in contact with the Vatican’s office in the United States and they are looking into the matter. U.S. Senator Richard Lugar’s office is also investigating.
Father Christiaan Kappes has lived in four countries and speaks eight languages. He has been a chaplain to murderers in a Mexican prison, a student at the Vatican and most recently an emissary from Rome to the Orthodox Church in Greece.
Bright and level-headed is how family and church officials describe the 36-year-old Kappes, who as a boy attended Holy Name parish in Beech Grove and grew up to be ordained a priest by the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.
So it is with growing concern that they try to piece together the mystery over what has happened to the young priest. Kappes went missing Monday in Athens after his family says he feared for his life and sought but was denied refuge at the American embassy in the Greek capital.
His father says their last conversation wasn’t reassuring.
Virgil Kappes said his son called from a phone in the embassy and told him that the family of his friend and translator, Ioanna Lekakou, was trying to force her to give up $70,000 she garnered from the sale of property she inherited from her grandparents.
She had been assaulted, he told his father. And because she had made him the executor of her will — for the purpose of distributing it for the poor — the men now wanted him dead, too.
He then told his father that he had been warned by the thugs that if he returned to his Athens church, they would kill the nuns and parishioners who might also be there.
The priest also told his father he wanted to come home and to get the translator out, too. He took a credit card number from his father and bought a $1,600 ticket for her. He said he would send her away first and follow the next day.
Then, in something of grim farewell, the priest took a moment to thank his father for all he’d done, expressed his love for him. The translator, who had visited the Kappes family in Indiana this summer, did the same. And then the priest left his father with this chilling closing: “Dad, if you don’t hear from me in 12 to 24 hours, I’m dead. Don’t worry. You’re never going to find me again.”
That was almost four days ago.
What’s happened after that is now an international mystery that involves Greek police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department and the Vatican. So far, there has been little to clear it up.
“All I can say is that I’ve never heard my brother afraid for his life before,” said Nadia Charcap, the priest’s sister, who spoke to him as recently as Sunday night. “And I did. He was very concerned.”
The State Department confirmed Thursday that Kappes visited the embassy in Athens on Monday. But it said Kappes left the embassy while an official was still on the phone with his family “discussing options to ensure his safety.”
“He did not request safe haven,” said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.
Virgil Kappes said he was the family member on the phone with his son. And that the priest left because he had been denied safe haven. Kappes accused embassy officials of trying to cover a mistake now that his son had disappeared. “This is the incompetency of the administration,” he said, “not taking a person in.”
Whatever transpired, both Kappes’ family and the State Department agree that the priest is now missing. And embassy officials, Nuland said, are checking hospitals, jails, hotel and airports in search of him.
Lekakou, the translator, was due to arrive in Indianapolis on Wednesday morning. But when the Kappes family went to the airport to meet her plane, she wasn’t on it. They learned from airline officials that she never boarded in Athens. They checked on Kappes and found that, he too, never flew out of Athens.
Charcap said embassy officials in Greece said her brother was seen bringing Lekakou to the airport on Monday afternoon and then leaving by himself.
The whole episode, Charcap admits, is “outrageous” and “overwhelming.” She discounts any notion that her brother and the translator simply went away together. “I believe 100 percent in my brother,” she said.
Charcap said that when Lekakou visited this summer, she talked about being estranged from her mother and brother since the bequest from her grandparents. And she even trembled when she talked.
Charcap also said her brother is not prone to letting emotion overcome his sensible mind. And he’s a generous person: He paid for her and her family to travel to Ecuador to visit friends there. He went along, too, and taught philosophy to the nuns in a convent there. (The nuns are now holding prayer vigils for him, she said). In Italy, Kappes helped pay the rent of the family they stayed with. In Sri Lanka, he provides financial support to a woman serving the church there.
The family also is concerned because of other recent events.
Last week, Kappes asked his father to check his bank accounts in Indiana because he feared someone was trying to hack into them, along with his email. He reported that Lekakou’s family was angry with her over the inheritance she’d gained from her grandparents and that she had been beaten and hospitalized.
He also began to fear that their phones were being tapped. In conversations with his sister, they sometimes spoke in Spanish, which she teaches at Roncalli High School.
In one of his final conversations, he rattled off a list of names of the people from Lekakou’s family that he suspected were behind their troubles. He became fearful not only for his own life and Lekakou’s but also for the nuns and parishioners in his church.
“He went from being totally stable,” Charcap said, “to really fearing for his life.”
At the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, Kappes is described as an extremely smart guy who is deeply into theology. He served as an associate pastor for three years at the St. Louis parish in Batesville. He spent a year in Mexico doing Spanish immersion then went to Rome for graduate studies.
He had been in Athens the past three years as part of a doctoral studies program studying Greek philosophy. He was sent there, said Indianapolis archdiocesan spokesman Greg Otolski, at the request of the Vatican, which is trying to improve its relationship between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, which have been split since the 12th Century.
Priests in such situations, Otolski said, have the potential to eventually become Vatican diplomats.
For now, though, Kappes is merely missing. His father hopes perhaps the priest, who said he was being watched, opted for another route to safety away from the airport, perhaps over land to Turkey. He hopes his son will turn up at a papal nuncio’s office in a neighbor country.
His sister, though, fears the worst. Beyond losing her brother in some strange Greek drama, she’s worried that the family might never know exactly what happened.
“I just want an answer,” Charcap said. “I just want to know what happened to my brother.”
This fine young man went to high school at Franklin Central in Indy with my with my two oldest kids. His dad was a wrestling coach and teacher and was responsible for getting all my sons involved in wrestling. Just a down to earth great family. Chris is one of the nicest people you would ever meet and always thought first about everyone else before himself. Please say a prayer that he and the translator turn up alive. Thanks
Archdiocesan statement on Father Christiaan Kappes
Father Christiaan Kappes, a priest for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, has been reported missing in Athens, Greece. Father Kappes has been in Athens the past three years at the request of the Vatican working on doctorate degree. We are concerned that Father Kappes' family has not been able to contact him in recent days. The archdiocese also has not been able to locate him. We are praying for the well-being of Father Kappes and his family and for Father Kappes' safe return to the United States. The archdiocese has been in contact with the Vatican’s office in the United States and they are looking into the matter. U.S. Senator Richard Lugar’s office is also investigating.
Father Christiaan Kappes has lived in four countries and speaks eight languages. He has been a chaplain to murderers in a Mexican prison, a student at the Vatican and most recently an emissary from Rome to the Orthodox Church in Greece.
Bright and level-headed is how family and church officials describe the 36-year-old Kappes, who as a boy attended Holy Name parish in Beech Grove and grew up to be ordained a priest by the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.
So it is with growing concern that they try to piece together the mystery over what has happened to the young priest. Kappes went missing Monday in Athens after his family says he feared for his life and sought but was denied refuge at the American embassy in the Greek capital.
His father says their last conversation wasn’t reassuring.
Virgil Kappes said his son called from a phone in the embassy and told him that the family of his friend and translator, Ioanna Lekakou, was trying to force her to give up $70,000 she garnered from the sale of property she inherited from her grandparents.
She had been assaulted, he told his father. And because she had made him the executor of her will — for the purpose of distributing it for the poor — the men now wanted him dead, too.
He then told his father that he had been warned by the thugs that if he returned to his Athens church, they would kill the nuns and parishioners who might also be there.
The priest also told his father he wanted to come home and to get the translator out, too. He took a credit card number from his father and bought a $1,600 ticket for her. He said he would send her away first and follow the next day.
Then, in something of grim farewell, the priest took a moment to thank his father for all he’d done, expressed his love for him. The translator, who had visited the Kappes family in Indiana this summer, did the same. And then the priest left his father with this chilling closing: “Dad, if you don’t hear from me in 12 to 24 hours, I’m dead. Don’t worry. You’re never going to find me again.”
That was almost four days ago.
What’s happened after that is now an international mystery that involves Greek police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department and the Vatican. So far, there has been little to clear it up.
“All I can say is that I’ve never heard my brother afraid for his life before,” said Nadia Charcap, the priest’s sister, who spoke to him as recently as Sunday night. “And I did. He was very concerned.”
The State Department confirmed Thursday that Kappes visited the embassy in Athens on Monday. But it said Kappes left the embassy while an official was still on the phone with his family “discussing options to ensure his safety.”
“He did not request safe haven,” said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.
Virgil Kappes said he was the family member on the phone with his son. And that the priest left because he had been denied safe haven. Kappes accused embassy officials of trying to cover a mistake now that his son had disappeared. “This is the incompetency of the administration,” he said, “not taking a person in.”
Whatever transpired, both Kappes’ family and the State Department agree that the priest is now missing. And embassy officials, Nuland said, are checking hospitals, jails, hotel and airports in search of him.
Lekakou, the translator, was due to arrive in Indianapolis on Wednesday morning. But when the Kappes family went to the airport to meet her plane, she wasn’t on it. They learned from airline officials that she never boarded in Athens. They checked on Kappes and found that, he too, never flew out of Athens.
Charcap said embassy officials in Greece said her brother was seen bringing Lekakou to the airport on Monday afternoon and then leaving by himself.
The whole episode, Charcap admits, is “outrageous” and “overwhelming.” She discounts any notion that her brother and the translator simply went away together. “I believe 100 percent in my brother,” she said.
Charcap said that when Lekakou visited this summer, she talked about being estranged from her mother and brother since the bequest from her grandparents. And she even trembled when she talked.
Charcap also said her brother is not prone to letting emotion overcome his sensible mind. And he’s a generous person: He paid for her and her family to travel to Ecuador to visit friends there. He went along, too, and taught philosophy to the nuns in a convent there. (The nuns are now holding prayer vigils for him, she said). In Italy, Kappes helped pay the rent of the family they stayed with. In Sri Lanka, he provides financial support to a woman serving the church there.
The family also is concerned because of other recent events.
Last week, Kappes asked his father to check his bank accounts in Indiana because he feared someone was trying to hack into them, along with his email. He reported that Lekakou’s family was angry with her over the inheritance she’d gained from her grandparents and that she had been beaten and hospitalized.
He also began to fear that their phones were being tapped. In conversations with his sister, they sometimes spoke in Spanish, which she teaches at Roncalli High School.
In one of his final conversations, he rattled off a list of names of the people from Lekakou’s family that he suspected were behind their troubles. He became fearful not only for his own life and Lekakou’s but also for the nuns and parishioners in his church.
“He went from being totally stable,” Charcap said, “to really fearing for his life.”
At the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, Kappes is described as an extremely smart guy who is deeply into theology. He served as an associate pastor for three years at the St. Louis parish in Batesville. He spent a year in Mexico doing Spanish immersion then went to Rome for graduate studies.
He had been in Athens the past three years as part of a doctoral studies program studying Greek philosophy. He was sent there, said Indianapolis archdiocesan spokesman Greg Otolski, at the request of the Vatican, which is trying to improve its relationship between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, which have been split since the 12th Century.
Priests in such situations, Otolski said, have the potential to eventually become Vatican diplomats.
For now, though, Kappes is merely missing. His father hopes perhaps the priest, who said he was being watched, opted for another route to safety away from the airport, perhaps over land to Turkey. He hopes his son will turn up at a papal nuncio’s office in a neighbor country.
His sister, though, fears the worst. Beyond losing her brother in some strange Greek drama, she’s worried that the family might never know exactly what happened.
“I just want an answer,” Charcap said. “I just want to know what happened to my brother.”
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