JOLIET (IL)
The Pillar [Washington DC]
July 31, 2025
By Michelle La Rosa
The court dismissed a battery charge stemming from an incident last November.
A court in Illinois has dropped battery charges against Fr. Carlos Martins, a prominent priest accused of inappropriate conduct toward a student during a relic tour at a parish in Joliet last November.
An official with the Will County State’s Attorney confirmed to The Pillar that the battery charges were dismissed this week.
A court order from the “12nd [sic] judicial circuit,” signed Wednesday, dismissed the charge against Martins, noting that “The Court has considered of [sic] all facts known to it regarding the underlying circumstances of this matter.”
The court order said it was issued in response to the state attorney’s motion for deferred prosecution and nolle prosequi – a prosecutor’s decision not to pursue a case.
The court order dismissing the charge said, “The State has confirmed that Fr. Martins has never been charged with a crime, accused of a crime, accused of any allegations of impropriety with minors, nor subject to any form of canonical discipline as a priest.”
Laura Byrne, assistant state’s attorney for Will County, told The Pillar that the statement was meant to indicate that Martins had never previously been charged with a crime before January of this year, when he was charged with battery, a class A misdemeanor.
“As indicated in the order, the State verified Fr. Martins has no criminal history,” Byrne said.
In a statement, Martins’ attorney said the order is “exactly the result we were expecting.”
“What he was charged with was simply absurd,” the attorney said. “This was a case that never should have been brought forward.”
In January, a misdemeanor battery charge was filed against Martins at the Will County Courthouse in Joliet. The charge could have resulted in one year in jail if the priest had been found guilty.
The battery charge stemmed from an incident last November at Queen of the Apostles parish in Joliet.
The parish said it had reported to the police a Nov. 21 “incident with [Fr. Martins] and some students [that] was reported to have happened in our church.”
The parish said that after police were called Martins was instructed “that he must depart from our parish and out of our diocese.” The parish also announced that a nationwide tour Martins was conducting, displaying the relics of St. Jude in parishes for veneration, had come to an end.
At the same time, the priest’s religious community, the Canadian Companions of the Cross, said that Martin’s ministry had been “temporarily suspended pending an ongoing police investigation.”
The Companions of the Cross told The Pillar they plan to release a statement in the coming days about the dropped charges, and whether Martins will now be returning to ministry.
Martins’ attorney pushed back on news reporting about the incident, especially from The Pillar, saying that Martins had been unfairly characterized, and that reports about the incident were overblown — while indicating the prospect of litigation over the story.
In a publicly released letter to The Pillar, the attorney said that Martins had touched a student’s hair during his time at the parish to build “rapport,” and that police were investigating the matter only at the insistence of an “outraged father.”
“As he always does, Fr. Martins began his interaction with the attendees in ‘chit-chat’ dialogue. He is bald and apt to joke about it as a conversation starter,” the attorney wrote.
“During his conversation with the older students, he made a comment to a student about her long hair, remarking, ‘You and I have almost the same hair style,’ a comment met with giggles. He then remarked that he also once had long hair like hers, and he joked he would ‘floss my teeth with it.’ Again, his comment was met with laughter. He then asked the student, ‘Have you ever flossed with your hair?’ Laughing, she shook her head, no. He then said, ‘Well, you have the perfect length for it,’ as he lifted up a lock from her shoulders to show her its length.”
“She giggled along with the others. He was building rapport,” the attorney said, lamenting that when the girl told her father what had happened, “he, apparently, became infuriated by what he heard, calling the police.”
According to the January 22 criminal complaint obtained by The Pillar, Martins was alleged to have “knowingly without legal justification by any means made physical contact of an insulting or provoking nature” with the minor student.
The criminal complaint included a claim not reported in his own narrative, that Martins “placed the hair of [the minor] in his mouth,” in violation of Illinois law.
Martins’ attorney later denied that Carlos had pretended to floss with a student’s hair, calling the accusations “a takedown of a good priest and an attempted shakedown of the Church.”
At the time of the November 2024 incident, Martins was conducting a tour of U.S. parishes with relics of St. Jude the Apostle, which are displayed in a carved wooden reliquary in the shape of an arm conferring a priestly blessing.
The priest said that the Holy See had asked him to conduct the St. Jude relic tour. He said the relic was made available for touring from St. Peter’s Basilica, and has “not [previously] left Italy for 1,700 years.”
In addition to his work displaying relics, Martins, who has said publicly that he performs exorcism ministry, launched in 2023 a podcast series called “The Exorcist Files,” which features audio dramatizations of reportedly demonic encounters.
The priest claimed in 2023 that the podcast was launched in response to a Vatican request. While he has not indicated which dicastery made the request, he told the National Catholic Register that he began the podcast when “the Holy See asked me to undertake a catechesis about the Church’s teaching regarding the demonic, spiritual warfare and exorcism.