People always cry at weddings, but Father Brian Kane hopes they’ll be tears of happiness when he celebrates the wedding Mass today for Erik Zlomke and Sarah Hoffman.
Father Brian Kane, left, a chaplain in the Army National Guard, will officiate at Sgt. Eric Zlomke’s wedding Saturday, July 16, 2005. The two will report for active duty on Sunday to go to Iraq, where Zlomke will act as Kane’s assistant and bodyguard. (Eric Gregory)
On Sunday, both Kane and Zlomke will report for duty with the Army National Guard in preparation for deployment to Iraq.
Kane will be going as a chaplain and Zlomke will be his assistant, which means he’ll act as Kane’s bodyguard because military chaplains don’t carry weapons. Kane, who holds the rank of captain, and Zlomke, a sergeant, will both be assigned to the 67th Area Support Group which will ship off to Iraq later this year.
As chaplain, Kane will minister to the spiritual needs of the troops at a base but also will perform Masses, hear confessions, provide counseling and other religious services to men in the field.
"Wherever he goes I’ll be with him," Zlomke said. "There’s definitely danger, especially when we’re traveling. My main job will be to be sure that he makes it from point A to point B safely."
Zlomke, who joined the Army Guard three and a half years ago, has served a tour of duty as a medic in Bosnia. Kane was commissioned as a chaplain in March 2003 and had two summers of training at Fort Jackson, S.C.
Zlomke, 27, was a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln but was unsure of his career plans when he decided to join the guard. "It was a way to see a few things," he said.
As a medic in Bosnia, he discovered he had an aptitude for working with the sick and injured. Now he’s studying nursing while his fiancee has one more semester to finish her degree in business administration.
They’ve been a couple for three years, and had planned to get married after one of them had graduated. But when Zlomke got his deployment orders a month ago, "we talked about it and we both felt it would be a good thing for both of us if we were married" before he left, he said. They’ve only been officially engaged for three weeks.
They both attend St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, also known as the Newman Center, the Catholic student ministry where Kane has been assistant pastor. Since Zlomke and Kane will be almost constant companions in the Army, it was only fitting that he perform the ceremony.
"It will be a pretty small wedding," Zlomke said. "Just mainly our family. When I get back from Iraq we’ll renew our vows and it’ll be more of a big affair."
When he became a priest five years ago, Kane had no thoughts of joining the military, but while on the staff of the Newman Center he met many guard members who told him about the lack of Catholic chaplains, so he felt the call to serve. [Source]
I got to go on a cruise for my honeymoon. Unfortunately it was on an aircraft carrier without my wife and deployed to the Indian Ocean during the Iranian hostage crisis.
7 comments
I went to a Mass celebrated by Fr. Kane during Lent. He’s a good priest. May Jesus protect him and his assistant.
May God bless them both.
Indeed. I am formerly Police rather than military, but I met and became friends with former chaplains Monsignore Gerry Cudmore (Army, and later Vicar General to the Military Ordinate here), and then to the Melbourne Archdiocese), and Bishop Geoffrey Mayne (Navy, and the Military Ordinary). Both men died holy deaths; in Bishop Mayne’s case, he told me he was praying for “a quick death and a merciful judgement”. He died two days later. Both men confirmed my private opinion that military chaplains are, even for the kind of Priests I prefer to be with, unusually level-headed…
God bless them all, with Father Kane, and indeed all military chaplains everywhere…
Talk about hilarious coincidences! Fr. Kane is one of my classmates! I wish him all the best and I remember him in our prayers.
My pastor is heading to Iraq. My prayers go with these men as well.
In my Canadian Forces experience, military priests are the salt of the earth. God bless them and with all American, Canadian and allied forces in our common struggle against Islamofascism.
(Canada is about to augment its current 1000 troops in Kabul, Afghanistan with a brigade deployment to the Kandahar region.
I will like to have Sunday readings as on the Missal and if possible commentories in my box: Thank you