Minnesota priest injured in Iraq while serving as Army chaplain, dies

Submitted on June 25, 2009

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ST. PAUL, Minn. (CNS) — Father H. Timothy Vakoc, a Minnesota priest who was reportedly the first Army chaplain to be gravely injured in the Iraq War, died June 20. He was 49.

He died at a nursing home in the suburb of New Hope, Minn. No cause of death was released.

According to journal updates by his family on the CaringBridge Web site at caringbridge.org/mn/ timvakoc, Father Vakoc “was surrounded by family and friends who prayed him into heaven.”

His funeral Mass was to be celebrated June 26 at St. Paul Cathedral in St. Paul.

Father Vakoc, ordained in 1992 as a priest of the St. Paul and Minneapolis Archdiocese, served in two parishes before joining the Army full time in 1996. The priest held the rank of major.

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