Chicago priest bestows blessing at Las Vegas shooting scene

Purging evil from a chamber of death — that was the purpose of a Roman Catholic priest’s recent visit to the Mandalay Bay hotel room from which a gunman unleashed the Oct. 1 massacre.

“As we opened the temporary door installed to seal the crime scene, I have to say it felt like I was pushed back, as if to keep me from entering,” the Rev. Clete Kiley told the Chicago Sun-Times about his Oct. 18 visit to spiritually cleanse the 32nd floor room.

With its Las Vegas workers still shaken by the horror of the mass shooting, the UNITE HERE Culinary Workers Union Local 226 had asked the Chicago-based Kiley — who is a union trustee and works on its immigration reform strategies — to perform a “blessing” on the room, after the FBI had released it back into the control of the hotel.

“What happened on Oct. 1 was tragic and is something that many of our employees at Mandalay Bay are still struggling with,” said a statement issued to the Review-Journal from MGM Resorts International spokeswoman Debra DeShong. “Some of our employees were understandably turning to a religious figure for solace and support.”

Surrounded by bullet holes, the covered window and the marking where the shooter’s body had been, Kiley — holding a glass of water and a palm branch he had taken from a tree in the lobby — began to pray. “I instinctively began to pray in silence,” he told the Sun-Times. “ ‘St. Michael, the Archangel, defend us in battle. Protect us against the wickedness and the snares of the devil.’ ”

— Steve Bornfeld