A Lepanto Institute investigation documents, using Federal Election Commission records, the contributions of Monsignor Robert Boxie III to ActBlue and to Democratic candidate Amanda Edwards, a supporter of abortion and gender ideology. The same prelate who has just accused the Church of racism.
Monsignor Robert Boxie III, recently appointed auxiliary bishop of Washington by Leo XIV, has funded pro-abortion politicians and the Democratic Party’s largest fundraising platform with his own money. This is revealed by an investigation from the Lepanto Institute, the U.S. organization led by Michael Hichborn that has spent years auditing the destination of Catholic funds in the United States, based on public records from the Federal Election Commission.
What the election records show
According to data from the Federal Election Commission, Boxie made two contributions to ActBlue, the platform that channels donations exclusively to Democratic candidates: one hundred dollars in 2019 and fifty in 2020. And on September 24, 2025, already a priest with a long career in the archdiocese, he donated two hundred and fifty dollars to the campaign of Amanda Edwards, Democratic candidate for Congress from Houston. On the donation record, the now-bishop identified himself as a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Washington.
The profile of the beneficiary leaves no room for ambiguity. Edwards has the backing of Emily’s List, an organization whose sole purpose is to bring pro-abortion women to power. Her campaign platform promises to codify the protections of the Roe v. Wade ruling at the federal level, to shield “reproductive” decisions under health-care regulations, and to combat pro-life laws in states such as Texas. After the Dobbs decision, she urged her followers to turn to Planned Parenthood. She publicly thanked the endorsement of the Houston LGBTQ+ Political Caucus, celebrated Trans Visibility Day, and, in a debate this past January, boasted of having been “on the front lines” against discrimination of trans people even when it cost her votes.
Classmates and colleagues at the firm
The investigation goes beyond a mere coincidence. Boxie and Edwards graduated the same year, 2007, from Harvard Law School. Both later worked as associates at the firm Vinson & Elkins—he between 2008 and 2010 and she between 2008 and 2012. And, according to Lepanto, they remain Facebook friends. It is difficult for the bishop to claim he did not know whom he was funding or what her positions were on abortion, homosexuality, and the family.
The bishop who sees racism in the Church
The donations take on special significance in light of the interview Boxie gave on September 10 to the program Vatican Access, hosted by Robert Duncan. The program’s account promoted it with a blunt question and answer: why are there so few Black bishops in the United States? The short answer, according to the bishop himself, was racism. In the same conversation, the prelate lamented that Catholics do not speak frankly about politics or about government policies contrary to the faith.
Boxie also claimed to be the second African-American bishop in the entire country, and Lepanto dismantles that claim with a simple historical count. Boxie is the twenty-ninth African-American bishop appointed in the United States; the first, James Augustine Healy, was consecrated bishop of Portland (Maine) in 1875. Fourteen are alive today, five of them active. At most, Hichborn notes, the new auxiliary of Washington would be the second African-American bishop born in the United States currently in office, but that is not what he said.
The prelate also defended diversity, equity, and inclusion programs as part of Catholic tradition and went so far as to state that God has created “every race, every culture, every language, every ethnicity, every creed.” Lepanto describes the phrase as gravely erroneous, since it attributes to God the authorship of religious errors.
Hichborn’s conclusion is as harsh as it is well-founded: while Boxie lectures the Church on racism and reproaches white Catholics for their silence before “the elephant in the room” of politics, he himself ignores the Church’s teaching on abortion, homosexuality, and the family, and delivers his thirty pieces of silver to Amanda Edwards’s campaign.
It remains to be seen whether the Archdiocese of Washington and the Nunciature have anything to say about the donation history of a man to whom Leo XIV has just conferred the episcopal ring.