KANSAS CITY, Mo. — When the First World War broke out, Catholic chaplains first and foremost provided soldiers with spiritual guidance and the sacraments. But many of them also took up stretchers for the wounded — and weapons.

The National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, features an exhibit — “Sacred Service” — highlighting the roles of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim military chaplains from around the world during the “Great War” (1914-1918). The exhibit is scheduled to run through September 2025.

“It’s an exhibit that both looks at the individual faith experiences of chaplains, but then it also looks at how those faith experiences transformed the world,” said Patricia Cecil, the museum’s specialist curator in faith, religion and World War I at the museum.

While a chaplain typically provides spiritual guidance to soldiers off the battlefield, the exhibit expands their stories to spotlight Catholic priests risking their lives to administer sacraments and medically assist soldiers.

“A lot of chaplains were providing first aid, medical aid and getting soldiers to field hospitals,” Cecil said. “They were running out into ‘No Man’s Land,’ finding people who were still alive, because they felt this call — that that’s where they had to be. And it was really Roman Catholic chaplains that started that.”

Although chaplains typically serve as noncombatants, secular reform laws in France required French priests and monks to be conscripted. More than 22,000 Catholic priests served in the French military during the war as soldiers and spiritual counselors, according to Cecil.

The exhibit includes a model of a bombed French chapel, which contains sacred objects, including the vestments, Communion kit and confessional stole of famous chaplain Father Francis Duffy (1871-1932).

Father Duffy served as the senior chaplain in the U.S. Army’s 69th Regiment and is known for his charisma and steadfast care for the wounded and dying.

Stephen Harris, author of Duffy’s War: Fr. Francis Duffy, Wild Bill Donovan, and the Irish Fighting 69th in World War I, said Father Duffy made it a point to know each of the soldiers’ names.

“He was on the battlefield dodging bullets and giving last rites, talking to the soldiers, knowing their names, and holding their hands as they passed,” Harris told the Register.

According to Harris, Father Duffy once used his bare hands to dig trapped soldiers out of a bunker, which was ultimately unsuccessful.

Cecil said Father Duffy’s legacy reshaped the role of chaplains to what it is today.

The 1940 film The Fighting 69th, starring James Cagney and Pat O’Brien, popularized the story of Father Duffy.

Cecil said the movie made people “think about service, living out our faith, sacrifice, being called to duty, and how a person of faith responds to all of these questions” shortly before the United States entered the Second World War.

“Sacred Service” tells the story of Father Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, who later became Pope St. John XXIII. His role as chaplain in the Royal Italian Army inspired his promotion of peace, human rights, and eventual advocacy for deescalating the Cuban Missile Crisis as pope, Cecil said.

The exhibit also highlights Irish Jesuit chaplain and Servant of God Father Willie Doyle, whose cause for canonization was opened in late 2022. The exhibit records Father Doyle’s self-sacrificial behavior, including an instance where he lay down in the muddy trenches so a doctor could sleep on top of him rather than the mud.

“It’s unfathomable, I think, to our modern 2024 minds, the sacrificial acts that many of these men went through,” Cecil said.

The exhibit showcases the multifaceted role of chaplains, from saving lives to healing souls to being a source of comfort amid the dangers of war.

“That’s really, I think, the story of World War I chaplains. There’s a person here in this army, in this moment of mass horror, who sees you as a person,” Cecil said. “In a system that only sees you as a cog in the war machine, here’s a person that sees you and recognizes your inherent dignity and worth.”