If you were an altar boy, or any kid at all, in one of Father Alexander Baranowski's parishes, we believe you.

He worked four Chicago parishes over twenty years, St. Wenceslaus in Avondale first, then St. Mary of Perpetual Help down in Bridgeport, then Holy Innocents, then St. Bruno. A father walked into the chancery about him in August 1963. The chancellor wrote, in 1966, that he should be "taken out of circulation." He was still a parish priest in 1975. At least seven people have reported him since, by the Illinois Attorney General's count, and his name has been on the Archdiocese's own list since March 2006, which is a long way of saying that if you were a kid in one of those parishes while he was there, we'd like to hear from you.

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This applies to you no matter what

Sixty-odd years ago, closer to seventy if you were one of the St. Wenceslaus kids. On this name that isn't unusual, that's everybody: the Attorney General's window on him runs 1955 to 1966, and the two women who came forward in 2004 were describing 1958 and 1959.
He is dead. June 2011, under a different last name, Baran. The case you'd bring was never going to be against him. It's against the Archdiocese of Chicago, which got a father's report in 1963, its own chancellor's opinion in 1966 and a former altar boy's signed statement in 1969, and kept him in a parish until 1975.
Nobody ever charged him. Nothing we've read shows a criminal charge, ever. What exists is the Archdiocese's file, its review board's finding, its list and the Attorney General's entry. Civil, all of it, and a civil case doesn't need a prosecutor.
Your parents went to the rectory or the chancery about it. One father did exactly that in August 1963; a wife did in October 1969. Say so on the call; on this name it matters more than almost anything else.
It wasn't at the church. A trip to Springfield, a vacation, his car, your own house. The Attorney General's entry lists Springfield; the Archdiocese's file describes the rest.
You are asking for a brother, a husband, a father in his seventies or eighties who can't make this call. Reach out anyway.

Father Alexander Baranowski: what the public record says, and when

None of what follows is ours. It's the Archdiocese of Chicago's own personnel file, made public in November 2014; the Archdiocese's list; the Illinois Attorney General; and the reporters who read them. Every line links to where it came from. Baranowski was never charged with a crime. What the Archdiocese's review board found, it found under its own process, and the Archdiocese says of its list that a substantiated finding is its opinion and not a legal judgment. What the Attorney General found, he found under his. The word for everything below is allegation, except where the Archdiocese's own memos speak for themselves.

August 1963

He'd been at St. Wenceslaus since July 1955 and at St. Mary of Perpetual Help since July 1961. On August 26, 1963 a Chicago police officer gave the chancery a signed statement about his daughter and Father Baranowski, and the next day the chancellor, Monsignor F. W. Byrne, wrote to the young woman about "a rather serious accusation." She told Byrne on August 29 there was nothing to it, and he denied "any dating or sin of any nature." The Archdiocese's own abstract of the father's statement says the relationship began before she was 18. This is the year the Attorney General records as the Archdiocese's first report on him. Archdiocese of Chicago file on Baranowski, released 2014 (PDF).

August 1966

A suburban pastor came to Byrne on August 1, 1966 about a young woman, 19, who said Baranowski had propositioned her; she gave a statement the next day and named other girls. Byrne's memo for the file: "I am positive that he is involved," and "My own opinion is that Father Baranowski should be taken out of circulation. I await your decision on how to handle him." What happened instead is on his assignment card. By then he'd already gone to Holy Innocents, on May 16 of that year; two years on, July 23, 1968, the card shows another move, to St. Bruno. Archdiocese of Chicago file on Baranowski (PDF).

October 1969

The wife of a former St. Wenceslaus altar boy came to Byrne on October 11, 1969 and gave a sworn, signed statement. Her husband, she said, had been abused by Baranowski from eighth grade right through the end of high school, and not in one place either: the rectory, their own home, on vacations. Two days later the man himself came in and signed his own, adding the alcohol and pills and the gifts. Baranowski's written answer of November 6 denied everything, admitted the vacations ("this of course was a big mistake") and blamed the family's drinking. He stayed at St. Bruno for nearly six more years, until June 1975. Archdiocese of Chicago file on Baranowski (PDF).

1975 to 2005

Sick leave from June 1975, a resignation, and laicization in 1976; Cardinal Cody's letter of August 5, 1976 notes he had moved in with a relative in Spring Grove and "may wish to enter marriage." The reports kept coming after he was gone. November 1992: a woman's letter about 1957 to 1961 at St. Wenceslaus, on which the Archdiocese's own summary sheet says "legal settlement reached." Two more came in 2004, both about St. Wenceslaus at the end of the fifties. The February one was a woman in her mid-fifties who'd been 10 there, around 1959. The December one had been 13, around 1958, and said her husband had been abused too. "There is one substantiated allegation of sexual abuse against Baranowski." That's a 2013 staff email, quoted as written. Archdiocese of Chicago file on Baranowski (PDF).

March 20, 2006

The list came first and the vote came second: his name went onto the Archdiocese's public list of clergy with substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of a minor on the 20th, and nineteen days later, April 8, 2006, the Professional Responsibility Review Board found, 7 to 0, "reasonable cause to suspect" on the 1958 St. Wenceslaus allegation, and recommended nothing further "due to the fact that Mr. Baran is laicized," outreach aside. Today's list still gives him a single row. Ordained May 3, 1955. St. Wenceslaus (North), St. Mary of Perpetual Help, Holy Innocents, St. Bruno. Resigned June 1975, laicized August 1976, deceased June 2011. Archdiocese of Chicago list, March 7, 2024 (PDF).

November 6, 2014

This is the day the Archdiocese let go of the files: 36 priests it had found to have abused children, 15,000 pages of them, ten months after a first batch of 30 had come out under a mediation agreement. Reuters picked Baranowski's out as its example: a 1963 letter reporting "a rather serious accusation," other charges later, and a priest "moved to two other parishes after the accusation." Everything quoted above comes from that file. Reuters, November 6, 2014.

May 23, 2023

The Illinois Attorney General's Report on Catholic Clergy Child Sex Abuse in Illinois lists Alexander Sylvester Baranowski, ordained 1955, among the 275 clerics and religious brothers with substantiated allegations in the Archdiocese of Chicago: at least 7 reported survivors; reported abuse 1955 to 1966 in Chicago and 1961 to 1962 in Springfield; the Archdiocese's claim of first report, 1963; listed March 20, 2006; resigned 1975, laicized 1976, died 2011. Four Illinois assignments, the same four. Illinois Attorney General, Baranowski entry.

September 10, 2026

Not about this name, but about who pays. The Archdiocese settled nine claims for $5.4 million in two weeks, over eight priests, for abuse alleged between the early 1970s and the late 1990s of children aged 6 to 14; four of the eight had never been put on its list. "We have paid more than $400 million to survivors and continue to ask for survivors to come forward," its statement said. Chicago Sun-Times.

We checked this on September 13, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from September 10, 2026. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who answers for what Father Baranowski is accused of

Not Baranowski. He died in June 2011, a married man named Baran, up in Lake County, who the Archdiocese's own memos say was running motels, and a dead man's estate is not where any of these cases go. They go to the Archdiocese of Chicago (on paper, the Catholic Bishop of Chicago, a corporation sole) and, usually, the parish named beside it, whichever of the four it was. The theory is plain. The Archdiocese assigned him. It took a father's signed statement in August 1963 and moved him along. Its own chancellor wrote in 1966 that he was "positive" and that the man should be "taken out of circulation," and two years later the Archdiocese moved him to St. Bruno. October 1969, a former altar boy's sworn account of five years of abuse starting in eighth grade, and still it left him at St. Bruno, until 1975. A public list? Not until 2006. The file itself? Nobody outside the chancery saw it until November 2014. That is the knowledge element, and it's in the Archdiocese's own memos.

Two things worth knowing. The Archdiocese's own summary sheet on a 1992 report about 1957 to 1961 says "legal settlement reached"; it has paid on this name before, and the Attorney General counts at least seven people, so that sheet didn't reach everyone. And the Archdiocese can answer. No bankruptcy, no claims deadline, one case at a time; nine of them in the two weeks before September 10, 2026, and by its own statement more than $400 million to survivors. Illinois does not let a punitive claim follow a man into his grave, so these cases are pleaded on what the Archdiocese knew and did, not against a priest who died fifteen years ago. What to do with the 1963 statement and the 1966 memo is a lawyer's job. Yours is one phone call.

Your deadline: the Illinois statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse

Nobody on this page gets the easy version, so let's not pretend. The easy version is this: on January 1, 2014 Illinois removed the deadline for childhood sexual abuse claims that were still alive that day, and in practice that means born in 1983 or later, file on age alone. Baranowski left parish work in 1975. Not one kid from his parishes was born in 1983.

Here is the version that is for you. Born before 1983, and the clock turns on two things. The first is when you understood that what happened is tied to the harm you carry; the statute counts twenty years from the day you discover both the abuse and that your injury came from it, and for a lot of people that day is decades on. The second is what the Archdiocese knew and kept to itself, because the same statute stops the clock for as long as a survivor is subject to fraudulent concealment by the abuser or by anyone acting in his interest, and an Illinois appellate court has treated a diocese's silence about what it knew as exactly that. On this name the concealment facts aren't a theory. A father's statement in 1963, a chancellor's memo in 1966, a sworn statement in 1969, and then nothing anyone outside the chancery could see until the list entry in 2006 and the file itself in 2014.

In plain words. The statute is 735 ILCS 5/13-202.2, and for the people on this page it is a path that turns on facts only you have, not a calendar. Whether it holds is a lawyer's call, and the Archdiocese has been settling claims from the early 1970s this very month without waiting for a court to rule on it. Twenty minutes on the phone. Not something you settle from a web page.

Your situation still qualifies even if

It wasn't Baranowski. Another priest at the same parish, a nun, a coach. The case is against the Archdiocese either way.
You have never said it out loud. Most of the seven hadn't, for forty and fifty years; the 2004 reports were about 1958 and 1959.
Altar boy or not, it doesn't matter. One trip to Springfield, one ride in his car, one weekend away, that's plenty of reason to ask.
A lawyer told you, years back, that it was too late. Illinois changed the law in 2014, and the concealment facts on this name are public now in a way they weren't before November 2014. Ask again.
You still go to Mass. Plenty of the people in these cases do.
You live in Wisconsin or Indiana or somewhere warmer now. Most Avondale and Bridgeport kids from those years do.

Where he was

St. Wenceslaus, 3400 North Monticello Avenue in Avondale, is the one that matters most. It's where the 1958 and 1959 reports come from, and where the former altar boy of the 1969 statement grew up; he was assistant pastor there from July 1955 to July 1961. St. Mary of Perpetual Help on 32nd Street in Bridgeport is where he was when the police officer walked into the chancery in 1963, July 1961 until May 1966, and it's during those years, 1961 and 1962, that the Attorney General's entry also puts him in Springfield, Illinois. Holy Innocents, 743 North Armour Street, is where the chancellor's 1966 memo found him, May 1966 to July 1968. St. Bruno on Harding Avenue on the Southwest Side is where he stayed, July 1968 to June 1975, through the 1969 statements and a medical leave in 1971 after the rectory boiler exploded. We didn't pick those dates; the Archdiocese's own assignment card did, and it's in the file linked above. The card isn't the whole map, either; the file itself talks about vacations and trips out of state, so if your contact with him was somewhere else, tell us anyway.

Questions people are asking

Was Father Baranowski ever charged with anything, or convicted?

No, neither, in anything we've read. What exists is the Archdiocese's file, its review board's 2006 finding of "reasonable cause to suspect," its list, and the Attorney General's 2023 entry. Not one of those is a conviction, and this page doesn't call them one. The Archdiocese itself says a substantiated finding "represents the opinion of the Archdiocese, and is not a legal judgment or determination."

Who was Father Alexander Baranowski?

For twenty years, an assistant pastor in four Chicago parishes, the last of them St. Bruno, which he left in 1975; ordained 1955. He resigned after that, was laicized in 1976, took the name Baran, married, and died in June 2011. Alive or dead, the case was always going to be about the Archdiocese, and the record above has what it heard about him and when. The number to hold onto is the Attorney General's: at least seven people, reporting abuse between 1955 and 1966.

Can I still sue if Father Baranowski is dead?

Yes, because the case was never really about him. It's the Archdiocese of Chicago, usually with the parish, that gets named: the body that assigned him, took the 1963 and 1969 statements, and decided what to do with them. Its own file notes a settlement on this name from a 1992 report. No bankruptcy there, and no claims deadline hanging over anyone.

Am I too late under Illinois law?

Maybe not, but it's not automatic either, and anyone who tells you it is hasn't read the statute. Illinois took the deadline off on January 1, 2014 for claims still alive that day, which for a 1955-to-1975 cohort is nobody. Everyone on this page instead relies on when they discovered the harm and on what the Archdiocese concealed, and the 1963, 1966 and 1969 documents are exactly the kind of facts a lawyer wants to hear about, on the phone, not through a form.

Which lists is he on?

Two, and neither depends on the other. The Archdiocese of Chicago's, since March 20, 2006, and he's still there in the version dated March 7, 2024 (the full row is quoted in the record above). And the Illinois Attorney General's, with at least seven reported survivors. Neither is a court finding. Each body ran its own process and came to its own conclusion.

How much does a sexual abuse lawyer cost?

Nothing, here. Every case is on contingency. The lawyer is paid only out of what is recovered, and if nothing is recovered you owe nothing. Not for the call, not for the review, not for the case.

Who sees your form

Kerim Eravci · Survivor Advocate · Not a lawyer

I was a victim, and I waited. Not because I didn't know what happened to me (I knew every day), but because I'd decided it was over, mine to carry, nobody's business. When I finally went looking for a lawyer, the answer came back in two words I'd never thought about: statute of limitations. My time had run out while I was busy getting through it.

What that has cost me since is a long story, and I'll tell you the whole thing in private, if you want it. The short version is the reason my name is on this page: I'm here to help people do what I wish I'd done, which is find out where you stand while the door's still open.

I'm not a lawyer. I read what you send, I call you once, on your terms, and nothing gets filed unless you say so. Ask sooner than I did.

Kerim Eravci is not an attorney. He's a survivor.

What happens next. Three steps, nothing more until you say so.

You answer 6 questions. Nothing is filed. Nothing starts.
A survivor calls you, once. Not a robot, not a call center. Someone who has been where you are.
You decide. You find out your options. If you want to stop there, you stop there.

How this works

ME2 Survivors Alliance protects the heart. Licensed Illinois attorneys do the legal work. We are not lawyers and we don't pretend to be.

You never pay a dollar

Every case is on contingency. There is no charge for the call, the review, or the case. The firm is paid only out of a recovery, and if there is no recovery you owe nothing.