Church aims to make former priest into sainthood

It has been 23 years since the Rev. Charles Kram Jr. was laid to rest in Shiner, but his legacy is hardly forgotten, especially among the faithful.

Father Kram died on Sunday, Aug. 13, 2000, having aged 70 years, 47 of which he spent as a quadriplegic and totally dependent on others, yet despite all that, his greatest joy was helping others.

It was just his way of giving glory to God, those who knew him best say.

It’s why several at the Sts. Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church as well as many others within the Victoria diocese, have undertaken the long journey of getting the former priest officially canonized as a saint within the church.

There are currently more than 7,000 canonized saints within the Roman Catholic faith. It’s a process that can take decades, but if successful, it could be a huge deal for Shiner and its church, one that reaches well beyond the gates of either.

Outside the immediate diocese, the name Kram may not mean much, though some hope to see that change.

Still, most everyone has heard of Mother Teresa, right? Did you realize that even someone as famous as her for sacrifices made and her giving heart, it still took 19 years before the church signed off on her sainthood?

It’s true, and church leaders hope patience will once again persevere.

“You’ll see some saints take more than 200 or 300 years before they are canonized,” Deacon Joe Machacek said. “The last step must be a documented miracle work. It’s a very slow process.”

Father Charles Kram Jr. spent most of his days in the Yoakum City Hospital helping and guiding patients.

The deacon added that Father Kram served as an inspiration, even for those who may not ascribe to the whole miracle and sainthood business.

“We are doing it is because it seems to us that people don’t care about life,” he said. “If some people lose their leg or get cancer, they sometimes give up right away and say ‘Why me?’. But you never saw that in Father Kram.”

Hospital employee and sister of the church, Karen Roznovsky, was fortunate enough to work at Huth Memorial Hospital in Yoakum where Father Kram resided.

“Father Kram knew how others in the hospital probably felt because he knew the pain,” Roznovsky said. “He would go and see every single patient and he never complained about himself, it was always about the other person.”

From a young age, Charles Kram Jr. wished to become a Catholic priest. His inspiration for this came from his ministry of giving advice, encouragement, and spiritual direction to visitors as well as to people from all over the world using his ham radio. But God had other plansfor him. At the age of 22, with only one year left in the seminary, Father Kram was struck with bulbospinal polio.

So it was that in 1952 the budding young priest transformed from an otherwise healthy and active young man to a wheelchair-bound quadriplegic, which is how he lived out the rest of his days.

Still, he never gave up on becoming a priest. The dream finally became a reality on Dec. 5, 1975.

From then on, he preached and made countless blessings in the hallways of the Yoakum Community Hospital.

He spent many months learning to use special devices to feed himself and write. He received a battery-operated wheelchair that he learned to operate by pushing a ball covered stem with his chin. He also learned to hold a stick in his mouth to type, operate his ham radio, and turn pages of books. He slept in a rocking bed that helped to keep his lungs clear and make his breathing easier.

“You never heard Father Kram complain about anything and he had everything to complain about,” hospital employee and sister of the church, Karen Roznovsky, said. “In his condition, he could feel the pain of polio. That’s probably why he lived so long because he could tell the doctors where the source of the pain was. After he died, we worked on making a biography of his life. Then Rev. Charles Kram Jr. we realized he’s the kind of person that could be an inspiration to so many other people because he was so humble and a very saintly person.”

That was when the journey of anointing Father Kram to sainthood began. One of the reasons the church is working towards this sainthood is because of Kram’s resiliency. Kram would go and see every single patient in the hospital, baptizing people and hearing numerous confessions.

The church hopes to see Father Kram’s legacy live on. There are several books already written about Kram and his Godly livelihood.

Despite the years that have passed, however, Kram’s messages of hope and forgiveness can still be found like clockwork in each new edition of The Catholic Lighthouse, a monthly news publication put out by the Catholic Diocese of Victoria, as one of just a handful of deceased writer’s words that still see regular publication each month which aren’t straight out of the Bible.