ILLINOIS
Chicago Sun-Times

BY JORDAN OWEN Staff Reporter/jowen@suntimes.com

Updated: April 27, 2013

A Benedictine monk from Wisconsin has been charged with trying to abduct a 14-year-old girl in Antioch last week.

Police in the far north suburb said Saturday that Thomas M. Chmura, 57, a monk who has been living at St. Benedict’s Abbey in Benet Lake, Wis., for 32 years, was arrested Friday night and admitted he’d been offering rides to teenage girls the past six weeks.

Chmura was ordered held Saturday in lieu of $50,000 bail, charged with attempted child abduction and disorderly conduct.

Police said the 14-year-old girl was walking along Skidmore Drive in the Lake County suburb Thursday when a man pulled up in a Ford station wagon and asked if she needed a ride, telling her, “Come on, you’re so beautiful, let me drive you home.” When she refused, they said he told her,…