ILLINOIS
Chicago Tribune
Steve Schmadeke
Chicago Tribune
A Catholic priest responsible for recruiting young men to the priesthood appeared in court Wednesday on child pornography charges after police tracked him to a Maryland treatment center where the Chicago Archdiocese had sent him without notifying authorities, according to prosecutors.
Prosecutors also disclosed that the archdiocese initially hired a private investigator after an employee reported seeing child pornography on the laptop of the Rev. Octavio Munoz, 40, last year. The archdiocese conducted its own investigation for more than a week before contacting Chicago police. The laptop was never found, they said.
The archdiocese then sent Munoz to Maryland for counseling as the police investigation heated up, prosecutors said, prompting a sharp question from Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesil.
“Isn’t there counseling in the state of Illinois that he could’ve been afforded?” she asked.
She ordered Munoz to turn over all his passports and remain in Illinois if he can post his $50,000 bail on the single count of possession of child pornography. She also banned him from having any contact with minors or using the internet.
Munoz had been rector of the archdiocese’s Casa Jesus, a renowned training program for Latin American men who want to become priests. In that role, he traveled abroad to recruit young men to study in the United States, according to Assistant State’s attorney Guy Lisuzzo.
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