Biography
A Catholic priest with the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Kabat became widely known for decades of nonviolent anti-nuclear civil disobedience. In 1980, he helped catalyze the modern Plowshares tradition when he and seven others entered a General Electric facility in King of Prussia to symbolically “disarm” nuclear weapons components, an action carried out as religious witness against nuclear war.
Kabat was arrested in that 1980 action and in later protests. In 1984, he was again arrested after breaking into a Minuteman II missile silo site near Kansas City as part of the “Silo Pruning Hooks” action; he was convicted and received an 18‑year federal sentence (serving about a decade). He continued returning to nuclear weapons sites in later years, including an arrest connected to entering the Kansas City Plant construction area in 2012. On April 1, 1994 Kabat hammered on a Minuteman III nuclear missile silo in North Dakota — a continuation of the Plowshares disarmament tradition first set by the 1980 Plowshares Eight action. He was held at the federal prison camp at FCC Florence (Teller Unit) until August 1998. The sentencing court added 18 months to his term after determining that the 1994 ND action constituted a parole violation of his prior 1984 Plowshares action sentence.
Carl Kabat was an Oblate Catholic priest who became one of the most consistently imprisoned U.S. Plowshares activists, serving an estimated 17 years in federal and state prisons across more than 30 years of symbolic disarmament actions. He was one of the Plowshares 8 — the Catholic Left activists who on September 9, 1980 entered the General Electric Re-Entry Division in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, hammered nose cones for the Mark 12A nuclear warhead, and poured blood on weapons documents. He was convicted in February 1981 and sentenced to 5-10 years in Pennsylvania state prison. After his release he continued Plowshares actions including the 1984 Silo Pruning Hooks (Minuteman II missile silo, 18 years federal), and the 2009 Disarm Now Plowshares at Bangor Submarine Base. He died on August 4, 2022, age 88.
