On Oct. 11, left-wing and anti-Trump Chicago priest Father Larry Dowling engaged in the questionable use of the Blessed Sacrament as a means to protest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

From CatholicVote:

A delegation of priests, nuns, and laypeople marched roughly two miles from Maywood, Illinois, to the ICE processing center in Broadview, Illinois, around 11 a.m., according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The roughly 1,000 participants reportedly included parishioners from nearby churches and members of the Coalition for Spiritual Public Leadership.

Father Larry Dowling, who led the procession, later described the incident in a statement on his Facebook page. He said that when the group arrived, he and other clergy asked to speak with a Homeland Security or ICE representative for permission to bring the Holy Eucharist inside the facility and that state police relayed the request to federal officials who, he said, denied it.

[He] added that ICE did not speak with the clergy directly, saying federal authorities could not ‘stand in the presence of the Monstrance holding the Blessed Sacrament. No wonder. Evil is repelled, recoils in the presence of Christ.’

Notice how Dowling demonizes ICE. Not exactly shocking.

CatholicVote President Kelsey Reinhardt said in an Oct. 12 statement posted on X:

[Dowling] chose to lead a Eucharistic procession flanked by activists in bright yellow vests toward a federal office, arriving on a Sunday when no officials would even be present, only to lament to the cameras that ‘no ICE or Federal representatives were there.’

Any Catholic with a beating heart recognizes the moral call to bring Christ to the suffering, including migrants and the imprisoned. The Church has a duty to ensure access to Confession and Holy Communion for detainees; that is non-negotiable.

But that sacred mission is accomplished through fidelity, order, and perseverance, as the Bishops of Florida have shown in securing sacramental access for detainees through established channels, without spectacle, without turning the Eucharist into a gesture of protest….

The Church is not a theater. And since the Eucharist is the heart of the Church, it should not be instrumentalized as a tool in a political campaign.

Given Dowling’s background, his recent stunt isn’t a surprise. He’s a member of the theologically and politically left-wing Association of United States Catholic Priests, where one priest-member announced in a June 2025 meeting: “[W]hen I masturbate, I pray and I say, ‘Thank you, God.’ I think this a moment for praying also.”

You can imagine what many, if not most, of these AUSCP priests are likely, um, into.

Also, in a recent interview with The Pillar, Dowling referred to Bishop Robert Barron, Bishop Thomas Paprocki and Cardinal Timothy Dolan as being part of “a white nationalist Christian group” because, in his view, they aren’t “sufficiently outspoken on immigration” (read: they’re not Trump-bashing leftists).

Dowling, who doesn’t seem overly concerned about the grave evil of abortion, all but endorsed Kamala Harris in an October 2024 essay and asserted that Trump “violates every sense of what it means to be a follower of Christ.”

Speaking of Harris: I actually think the late Pope Francis, who clearly didn’t like Trump, unwittingly helped defeat her when he (rightly) said in September 2024 that she was “the one who kills babies.”

And my favorite Pope Francis quote of all time regarding abortion and abortionists: “It is not lawful. Never, ever eliminate a human life or hire a hitman to solve a problem.”