Father John Corapi
Author and speaker Father John Corapi will bring his message of hope to Chattanooga in August.
Father Corapi, who has led more than 400 missions and is familiar through his publications, videos, and appearances on the Eternal Word Television Network, will speak at the Chattanooga Convention Center on Aug. 12 and 13. The event is being sponsored by the Isaiah 58 chapter of the World of Hope Foundation in Chattanooga.
“I tell them that if God can do it for a hopeless case like me, he can surely do it for you,” said Father Corapi in an interview with The East Tennessee Catholic. “My case was an extreme. I like to use St. Paul’s words when he said it seems that God has preserved me as an extreme example to give hope to many.
“I have rarely if ever met anybody in a worse situation than I was at one time.”
The native of Hudson, N.Y., made millions in the California real-estate market in the 1970s. As he once told Our Sunday Visitor, he could often be seen tooling down Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills in a new red Ferrari, and he had a 2,000-square-foot bedroom “bigger than most people’s houses” to sleep in at night.
Once introduced to cocaine at a party, he developed a $10,000-a-week drug habit that depleted his riches and left him “physically and psychologically devastated,” the OSV article said.
Even prayer didn’t help him—at first.
“I was pretty much in disaster condition for several years and really wanted things to change,” he said in a recent interview. “I even asked God many times to help me, but nothing happened. Nothing will happen until a person makes a decision to give up serious sin. That means—for a Catholic—to go to confession, which is what I did. And that’s exactly when things started to change for the better.”
He went on to study for the priesthood and earn several advanced degrees with honors.
Father Corapi was ordained by Pope John Paul II in 1991 and completed a doctoral thesis titled “The Cross of Christ in the Magisterium of John Paul II.” The Holy Father declared 2005 as the Year of the Eucharist, which inspired Father Corapi to create one of his latest audio/video/CD/DVD series.
“I tried to respond to Pope John Paul II’s call,” he said. “Our series called ‘The Power of the Eucharist’ is the substance of most of my presentations in my travels around the country this year.”
When the pope died in April, Father Corapi developed another multimedia series. “We decided to bring out my doctoral thesis, which I had written between 1990 and 1993 in honor of Pope John Paul II. We changed it to a simpler title, ‘John Paul II and the Mystery of Suffering.’
“His apostolic letter Salvifici Doloris [‘On the Christian meaning of human suffering’] is right at the heart of the thesis. We try to make the Holy Father’s teaching in that area much more accessible to people, most of whom—including Catholics—have never heard it.”
Chattanooga audiences may expect to hear Father Corapi preach on the same subjects highlighted in the two series. “The talks will be extracted from either one of those—both, probably.”
The three pillars of Father Corapi’s preaching are love for and a relationship with the Blessed Virgin Mary that leads to a vibrant and loving relationship with Jesus Christ, great love and reverence for the Eucharist, and an uncompromising love for and obedience to the Holy Father and the teachings of the church.
“I didn’t really develop that,” he said. “That was something spontaneous, really unconscious, that was just there from the beginning. It probably was a combination of the Holy Spirit, my reading, and just the way things evolved for me. Most people will recognize those three things as coming from that very famous vision of St. John Bosco.”
His pillars are the “three most controverted areas in Christianity in the last several centuries—the Blessed Mother, the Eucharist, and the Holy Father,” said Father Corapi. “Because they’ve been problematic for so many people, that’s what I naturally gravitated to.
“A doctor doesn’t have to deal with what’s healthy in the body; he deals with what’s sick. There’s an awful lot of misunderstanding in recent centuries over those three areas, so I’ve tried to concentrate on that and clarify it, articulate it, and defend it.”
Father Corapi is a priest of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity, based in Robstown, Tex. An encounter in his seminary days with the society’s founder led him to the affiliation.
“I met Father James Flanagan,” he said. “In my conversation with him it just became instantly clear that I was called to the society. He told me that anyway, and he was very clear on it. I was attracted to their spirituality, and it just worked out.”
Registration for Father Corapi’s Chattanooga appearance will begin at 3 p.m. Friday, Aug. 12. A Mass celebrated by Bishop Joseph E. Kurtz, with Father Corapi as homilist, will begin at 7. A talk by Father Corapi will follow at 8:30.
Saturday’s schedule includes the rosary at 8 a.m. and talks by Father Corapi at 9 and 11 a.m. and 2 and 4 p.m. The keynoter will celebrate the concluding Mass at 7:30 p.m.
Cost to attend both days is $45 for adults, $75 for couples, and $25 for students (no charge for priests and religious). Sponsorships are available.
To register or learn more, call 423-877-0434 or visit www.worldofhope.org. The priest’s website is www.fathercorapi.com.