Fr. Samuel D. Pusateri

Order: OSB
Ordained: 1979
Status: Guilty plea

Diocese: Diocese of Peoria IL

Pusateri worked as teacher, chaplain and counselor at St. Bede Academy near Peru, IL for 20 years. He received a 6-year jail sentence after pleading guilty in 1991 to abusing a teenage student 1989-1990. Moved the Joliet diocese as chaplain for the Franciscan sisters in Wheaton in 1995, there until 2004. Still a Benedictine and working in Rome per a 9/2010 newsletter from Most Rev. Marcel Rooney O.S.B., Abbot Primate. Moved by 2017-2018 to the Benedictine community at Sant’Anselmo. Included by 1/2020 on the Peoria diocese’s list of accused. Included in the 5/23/2023 IL Attorney General’s Report, which notes that he was still in active ministry in Rome in 2018.


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