CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune
By Manya A. Brachear, Tribune staff reporter. Freelance reporter Gary Gibula contributed to this report
Published March 23, 2006
The pastor of a west suburban church has been accused of molesting a 13-year-old Polish immigrant while serving at Five Holy Martyrs parish in Chicago in the late 1980s, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Cook County Circuit Court.
Rev. Chester Przybylo, who for the past decade has been pastor of the Shrine of Christ the King in west suburban Winfield, denied the allegations. The church is Catholic but is not recognized by the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
"It hurts," Przybylo said in an interview Wednesday. "I knew this boy for so many years, and as a man too. The allegations are not accurate. I've always prayed for him and now I'll pray for him even more."
The plaintiff, a 32-year-old construction worker in Chicago, said Przybylo first molested him in the communal showers of a health club in 1987. The abuse continued for more than a year, the suit said, at the apartment of a friend of the priest and in the rectory of Five Holy Martyrs, a historically Polish Roman Catholic parish at 4327 S. Richmond St.