Priest preached in Aurora, Chicago after being banned from California diocese

While ministering in San Bernardino, California in 2014, a Chicago-area priest named Joseph Jablonski told a boy something that prompted the bishop's office there, when it found out, to notify the authorities and bar him from ever again ministering in that diocese.

The bishop's office decided that Jablonski's words - deemed to be an attempt at "grooming" for a possible sexual encounter - amounted to "sexual abuse," according to records and interviews.

But that didn't prevent Jablonski from continuing over the next several years to serve as a priest in Chicago, Aurora and Joliet.

That's because, although the Diocese of San Bernardino immediately notified Jablonski's religious order - the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, whose U.S. headquarters is in Aurora - the order, which describes what happened as "an inappropriate conversation," kept things quiet.

The incident attracted little notice until late 2018 when the San Bernardino diocese published a public list of what it described as credibly accused priests and Jablonski was on it.

In March 2019, Rockford Bishop David Malloy learned he was on the list and on the same day, removed permission for him to minister in a church jurisdiction in the diocese, according to Ellen Lynch, the legal counsel and chancellor for the diocese. The Diocese of Joliet followed. The Chicago archdiocese would not comment.

For the complete story, visit chicago.suntimes.com.