The Transfiguaration, Hiroshima, a priest, the anniversaries, the protest at the missile silo: The clown priest loves such symmetry... and who doesn't?
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Father Carl Kabat awoke early Thursday morning, put on his clerical collar, grabbed his clown suit and quietly strolled out of his longtime friend's Arvada home.
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William Strabala, who has known the Catholic priest since their days in the seminary more than 50 years ago and had hosted him since he arrived from St. Louis, simply sighed. It was pointless, he knew, to attempt to talk the 75-year-old priest out of what he was about to do.
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Shortly before 8 a.m. Thursday, Carl Kabat arrived outside a N-8 Minuteman III nuclear missile silo near New Raymer in Weld County. He donned his signature clown costume and breached the fences that surround the silo.
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He hung banners on the fence. He kneeled in his yellow wig, his one-piece blue jumper adorned with patches and smiley faces and his outsized red shoes. And he prayed.
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Military authorities quickly arrived.
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Carl Kabat, who has spend most of the past two decades in federal prison for more than a dozen similar anti-nuclear-weapon protests, was led once again to jail, facing charges of criminal mischief and second- degree criminal trespass.
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"What is the date today?" Bill Strabala asked when I contacted him. "It is the 50th anniversary of his ordination as a priest, the 64th anniversary of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima, Japan."
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Carl Kabat, he said, loves such symmetry. - Story
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Photo: Fr. Kabat in his habit.
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Why do clowns always make me think of Fr. R? LOL!
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