The Kansas Camino and conversion: How an Oregon woman offered her Fr. Kapaun Pilgrimage for her husband and what came next

What if she made the Fr. Kapaun Pilgrimage and offered it for the conversion of her husband, Flint?

The idea surfaced as Mary Stearns watched yet another video about the pilgrimage on Formed.org. Until that day, she had never heard of Fr. Kapaun and had no connection to the Diocese of Wichita, but for some reason here she was, watching most of the series in one sitting. Mary noticed that some people in the videos said they were offering their pilgrimages for specific intentions, which called to mind Flint’s faith, or lack thereof.

Enthralled as she was, it seemed prudent to stick her toe in the water before jumping right in, so she contacted Sarah Evans, her best friend from Tulsa’s Bishop Kelley High School Class of 1982. Although Mary now lived in Baker City, Oregon, and Evans in Leawood, Kansas, the two had remained close friends for decades.

“Neither of us have lived in the same town since high school,” Evans said. “She went off to Oklahoma State; I went to the University of Kansas. Life led us to settle in different states, and we go fairly long periods without talking, but we always pick right back up where we left off.”

That morning, Mary asked Evans if she knew anything about the pilgrimage scheduled to begin in Wichita on June 1, 2023.

“I looked at my calendar and said, ‘I don’t have anything going on then. That sounds great,’” Evans said.

As Mary described what awaited them, Evans began to regret speaking so quickly. “I don’t mind being outdoors, but I am not one to go camping – even in an RV,” she said. “I am not a sleeping bag kind of gal, but Mary is. The thought of walking 20 miles in a day is very intimidating. As Mary described it, I thought, ‘I agreed to this before I knew it was a 60-plus mile walk, but how can I say no now that she already knows I’m free?’”

Evans sought confirmation that Mary wanted to make the pilgrimage. Mary, who had never been to Wichita, let alone Pilsen, did. 

“That decision has changed my life,” Mary said almost two years later. “I wanted to share a bit of my story, and my gratitude for Fr. Kapaun’s prayers.”

Fading Faith

Flint acknowledges that it was at his mother’s insistence that he attended Sunday Mass at St. Paul Catholic Church in Silverton, Oregon. But even if Mom steered him into that pew every weekend and saw to it that he hit each sacramental rite of passage, she also neglected any straightforward religious instruction. For a kid educated in public schools who lacked any prominent spiritual mentor, the upshot was a largely self-directed religious formation. 

Even so, he managed a real connection with the Lord that extended beyond merely trying to avoid divine – or parental – punishment. Although mentions of God the Father and the Holy Spirit made little impression on Flint in those years, he was drawn to Jesus, with whom Flint cultivated a genuine bond. 

“I remember one sunset in my late teens or early 20s that was particularly special because I was alone with Jesus, and I knew it,” Flint said. “I felt his warm and personal companionship beside me, like a true friend.” 

As he finished high school, a combination of good grades and a high school wrestling state championship in the 141-pound weight class opened doors to possible college scholarships, but choosing a major bewildered him, so Flint joined the U.S. Air Force. Once he was no longer under his mother’s watchful eye, he quickly dropped the habit of Sunday Mass.

“As I stopped practicing my faith, I lost my faith,” he said. “I don’t remember how suddenly it occurred, but it happened. I was traveling to new towns, communities, air force bases. Plus, I was drinking beer with buddies, and getting up on Sunday and searching out a church was not high on my priority list. At that point I wasn’t mad at God or objecting to going to church. I was lazy and uninspired.”

It wasn’t only a desire to sleep in, though. The curious country boy was exhilarated by sudden exposure to a much wider world. With the exception of one year as a cadet in the Air Force Academy, Flint spent 1988 through 1993 as an in-flight air refueling boom operator on KC-135s, which allowed him to fly around the world countless times and encounter other countries, languages, religions, and cultures.

“That was a cool job,” he said. “I got to conduct in-flight air refueling to different Air Force jets all over the world, including the SR-71 spy plane during the Cold War and I was in Operation Desert Storm.”

Many inarticulate impressions about the wider world began to harden into more defined forms as he completed his time in the Air Force and turned to the GI bill for higher education. 

“No one in my family had ever achieved a bachelor’s degree, and certainly not a graduate degree,” Flint said. “In fact, most of my immediate family never even graduated from high school, so I didn’t have any real role models.”

He focused on biology classes that first year of college, but also stumbled across The Power of Myth by writer and cultural anthropologist Joseph Campbell. Campbell’s theories of mythologies, archetypes, and beliefs swirled about in a 24-year-old mind already abuzz with the kaleidoscope of new experiences from his preceding half-decade. 

As Flint pondered how cultures across the globe from time immemorial had crafted myths to address life’s deepest mysteries, he couldn’t help but notice those accounts were – strictly speaking – fictions. From there, it seemed to him a short, intuitive step to conclude his Catholic upbringing also had been a ruse. 

“I had been tricked before, by that whole Santa Claus fiction, and so I was going to be wiser this time by believing that there was no God,” Flint said. “I began college and studied biology, physics, chemistry, and philosophy. Science seemed to fill in all the gaps.”

Many of those scientific studies arose from his decision to pursue a career in occupational therapy, a field he chose in large part at the urging of the new love of his life, Mary.

A Secret Sorrow

As the 2023 Fr. Kapaun Pilgrimage approached, Mary refined her intention. “My prayer very specifically became that Flint would just start seeking God,” she said. “He truly wasn’t seeking. He felt he had everything figured out.”

As Flint’s wife of more than three decades, Mary occasionally had engaged him on the subject of faith, but also wanted to respect him and leave Flint space to navigate his own search for truth. But even if she didn’t talk to Flint a lot about God, Mary did talk to God a lot about Flint. It wasn’t only about the state of his soul, critical as such a question might be, but even about the depth of their interpersonal connection. 

Posing for a photo in June 2024 at a post-wedding brunch are, from left, Evans family friend Kirk Peterson, Flint Stearns, Mary Stearns and Sarah Evans. The Stearns traveled to Kansas City for the wedding of the Evans’ daughter, Darby. (Coutesy photo)

Flint was not only a good husband, but a good father, a good man, and much else besides. He even went through the motions of belief – including Sunday Mass attendance – for the sake of their children, but it hurt Mary to know that her deepest human relationship lacked a spiritual connection. 

“My love of Christ is the most central part of who I am, and I didn’t share that with him. That was a source of great sorrow,” she said. “Then, to raise two children in this setting – despite his being such a good and moral person – was very challenging to say the least. My prayer for him ebbed and flowed. Sometimes I was more patient to allow him his journey, other times I became very frustrated with him. But, of course, it was a central intention of mine for 30 years.”

“I had the impression that she had been the spiritual leader for their family,” Evans said. “For many years, it seemed she was really praying for him to come alongside her as an equal in that role. That was very important to her.”

The Early Years

Mary had grown up in Tulsa, the youngest of five children born to a pair of devoutly Catholic parents who sent her and her siblings to 12 years of Catholic school. Since early childhood, Mary recalls, she had a deep love of God the Father, and by her early 20s had grown in relationship with Jesus. When her mid-20s proved particularly painful and tumultuous, Mary learned to lean heavily on the comfort of the Holy Spirit. 

Her love for, and reliance on, the Triune God was already central to her life by winter 1993, when she met Flint at the Tulsa Christmas tree lot run by their mutual friend, Eric Dahl, who had recruited Flint to join him on the lot during the first Christmas break of his freshman year of college.

“He was eating a hamburger and fries,” Mary said. “He had gotten out of the service and was growing his hair long, but he was cute and really friendly. He’s such a sweet soul.”

Flint was smitten. “Mary walked onto the lot and I was struck by how beautiful she looked,” Flint said. “I think I fell in love with her almost immediately.”

As they met up a few times throughout that December, Mary increasingly came to view Flint as an honorable man. The night before they were due to leave for Oregon, Flint and Eric joined Mary for dinner, and at some point Eric left Flint and Mary alone. Despite the daunting drive that awaited him, Flint stayed up all night talking with Mary before kissing her goodbye. 

“When I got back to Oregon and resumed my life, I missed her very much,” Flint said. “I took a chance, called her some days later, and she missed me as well.”

They began a long-distance telephone relationship, but within three months, she moved to Oregon, and Flint switched schools to live in the same city. 

“I truly fell in love with Mary – troubadour love,” he said. 

Although Flint’s faith had withered by that point, he saw no need to emphasize that, especially since Mary’s faith was so integral to her personality that it was hard to imagine her any other way. 

“I thought she was wonderful in every way, including her faith,” he said. “The fact that I was a Catholic, that I believed in much of what Christians have found to be a good way to live, was one reason she liked me, so I wanted to continue with behaviors that would keep us together. Her faith was always so firm that I knew I couldn’t destroy that, and I even remember thinking, ‘Why would I try to change her?  She is happy and good, so love her the way she is.’”

Nevertheless, Flint’s internal doubts were apparently not a brief phase. Unaware of the examples of groundbreaking scientists such as Fr. Georges Lemaître, Blessed Nicolas Steno, and Friar Gregor Mendel, Flint assumed science and faith were at odds, perhaps incompatible.

“Biology, organic chemistry, and physics taught me that everything in this temporal world was understandable, and so God wasn’t necessary,” he said. “As I came to grasp how things in this world worked at the most fundamental level, I didn’t need or even want to know God.  I thought, ‘Why settle for mysteries that can’t be solved when I can just learn how things work at the cellular, tissue, and organic level?’”

Moreover, as long as he kept up appearances for the outside world, how much did his internal beliefs really matter? “I always believed the Catholic way was a good way, would lead to a good life, and that Jesus Christ was an awesome dude who should be emulated,” Flint said. “I thought it was cute that she actually believed that God could perform miracles.”

Once, while the two of them were discussing such matters in a restaurant, Flint asked Mary if God could change his glass of water into a dish of salsa, a proposition that he considered absurd. 

“She firmly believed that he could,” Flint said. “I thought it was naive but cute.”

Flint’s questions did not bother Mary much in those days, although he was yet to call himself an atheist. When they married, they did so at St. Paul’s in Silverton. 

Flint and Mary Stearns pose on the steps of St. Paul Church in Silverton, Oregon, on their wedding day, June 22, 1996. Although Flint had grown up Catholic, by the time he and Mary were married, he would later acknowledge, he had become increasingly skeptical and would spend the next three decades quietly considering himself either an atheist or agnostic. (Courtesy photo)

“He continued to seriously question, but I am not sure if I didn’t really believe he didn’t believe, or if I thought I would change him.” Mary said. 

After they moved to Baker City, she discussed Flint’s doubts with their parish pastor. “Our priest said something like, ‘Flint’s head has forgotten but his heart hasn’t,’” Mary recounted. “I was allowing Flint his journey. He was always the most moral, honorable person I knew. So I prayed and was mostly patient.”

The Slog

Despite her initial misgivings, once Evans committed to the pilgrimage, she was all in. Although she was in the habit of working out for general fitness, she quickly realized that training specifically for the pilgrimage would be impractical. “How do you train for 12-hour walks unless you have that sort of free time?” she asked. 

Since Mary would be flying to Wichita, whereas Evans planned to drive, Evans took charge of obtaining their sleeping bags and tent. “I also did due due diligence in terms of finding the best walking shoes and socks,” she said.

Evans does not mince words. The pilgrimage was a hard road from the outset. “I am not going to sugar coat it – it was grueling,” she said. “After a Mass that began at 5 a.m., we started walking and got hit by all kinds of weather.”

“I had never heard the term ‘pelting rain’ and thought we were getting hailed on,” Mary said. “The pelting rain was coming sideways. It reminded me of growing up in Oklahoma, except we were walking in it out in the middle of nowhere with no choice but to just keep taking the next step.”

As a Kansan, Evans was no stranger to the state’s quick-pivoting climate, but this was ridiculous. “The torrential rains would lift, and then it would get so hot we were sweating in our ponchos. We would take them off and almost immediately get hit with more torrential rain,” Evans said. “Along the way, we kept on thinking of ways to make things easier or more comfortable for the pilgrims, and then realized it’s not supposed to be about the comfort and ease. The hard slog is kind of the point.”

And there was plenty of beauty to be found amid the slogging. Walking through wide-open spaces of Kansas farmland and conversing face-to-face (or shoulder-to-shoulder) with fellow pilgrims of all ages, the two friends were struck by the variety of people sharing their journey. “We saw so many young people,” Evans said. “There were high school kids, but also young families with little kids being pushed in strollers as their older siblings walked alongside.”

But the slog kept testing their patience. According to Evans, their two-person tent was too small to contain both them and their luggage. “We had to leave our bags out in the rain,” she said. “Mary kept her good humor throughout, but sometimes I got super cranky.”

Evans didn’t give up, though, even when she thought she might be forced to. As they prepared to camp on the first night, Evans doubted she would be able to walk the next morning.

“There are medical personnel on site to treat people and bandage them up, but I was too tired to wait in line,” she said. “When I undid my socks, sure enough, my feet were a mess of open blisters that had been rubbing against my good socks and shoes, and I thought, ‘I’m not going to be able to do day two, because this is only going to get worse.’”

Except by the next morning, her feet were again road-worthy. “I thought I would need to go to the medical personnel the next morning, get some bandages and ride the bus, but overnight my feet had healed to the point that there were no more open sores. It seemed pretty miraculous.”

Editor’s note: This article is Part One in a series. Part Two will appear in the March 21 edition of The Catholic Advance.