Chicago Archdiocese bars Back of the Yards priest from active ministry

CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

Manya Brachear Pashman
Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Archdiocese has declined to reinstate to active ministry a well-known Back of the Yards priest who has admitted to sexually abusing a minor when he was a teen.

At the request of Archbishop Blase Cupich, the archdiocese’s independent review board evaluated the case of the Rev. Bruce Wellems, who had acknowledged that he abused a 7-year-old boy when he was 15. That review in March uncovered “additional facts that weren’t previously available,” a spokeswoman for the archdiocese said, leading Cupich to bar Wellems from active ministry.

The spokeswoman declined to specify whether those new facts involved new allegations and referred all further questions to Wellems’ religious order, the Claretian Missionaries. In a statement Wednesday, the Rev. Rosendo Urrabazo, provincial superior of the Claretians, said Wellems had been removed from public ministry as a priest. It’s unclear if Wellems could continue to serve in the church in other ways.

“He is in communication with the superiors of his religious congregation about his future,” Urrabazo said.

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