If you were a kid in the parish or a student under Father Richard Bartz, we believe you.

Everyone called him Doc. The Archdiocese of Chicago was told about him on August 21, 1987, wrote it all down, and put him back to work ten months later. He stayed a priest for another fifteen years. The Attorney General counts at least three people who have said what he did to them. His own file, which the Archdiocese released in 2014, names more.

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Looking for the Archdiocese page? Archdiocese of Chicago survivors.

This applies to you no matter what

It happened on a trip, not at the parish. A ski weekend in Wisconsin, a summer trip out of town. That is where nearly everything in his file happened, and the Attorney General lists Lake Geneva and Boston alongside Chicago. The place doesn't matter. Who he was to you does.
You were 17. Or 18, 19, somewhere in there. The Archdiocese's own case sheet on him has three ages written on it, 17, 19 and 19, and the man it puts at 19 has said himself he was 18. Your age then changes which Illinois rule applies. It doesn't change whether you can ask.
Somebody knew, and told you it was handled. In September 1987 the seminary was told he was "just depressed and needs time away." That was the Archdiocese's own choice of words, in its own memo.
You met him at Columbus Hospital, the Cabrini Shrine or Ravenswood, years after the parishes. He was there under restrictions from 1988 to 2002; the hospital's own head of pastoral care was not told why until late 1991.
You're asking for someone else. A brother who was at Ascension, a husband who went through Mundelein, a friend who can't make this call. Ask anyway.

Father Richard Bartz: what the public record says, and when

None of this is ours. Most of it is the Archdiocese of Chicago in its own words, from the personnel file it released in November 2014; the rest is the Illinois Attorney General, the Chicago Tribune and the Archdiocese's public list, and every line links to its source. Bartz was never charged with a crime and never sued that we can find. A name on a list is that list's finding. The word for everything else here is allegation.

August 21 to September 4, 1987

The first report the Archdiocese admits to. On August 21 the rector of the Mundelein seminary phoned the Vicar for Priests: a relative of a 17-year-old St. Ignatius College Prep student had reported an incident with Bartz on an out-of-town trip that summer. The boy's principal called the DCFS hotline on August 27; DCFS said it would go no further because Bartz was not the boy's guardian. The vicar's memo that afternoon says the principal "was elated. He said it was nice to get good news for a change." Bartz went on medical leave at the St. Eulalia rectory in Maywood; the seminary was told he was "just depressed and needs time away." By September 29 the family had said he may have tried the same thing with a second boy that night. Archdiocese of Chicago personnel file, released November 2014.

July 1, 1988

Ten months later he was back, full time, as a chaplain at Columbus Hospital in Lincoln Park, still living at St. Eulalia's. The Vicar for Priests asked Cardinal Bernardin to confirm the job but not print it in the Chicago Catholic: "I would not want to re-open any wounds among the families affected, nor would I want Doc to be on the spot with other clergy who might inquire." The Archdiocese's own 1993 chronology adds that nobody checked whether his hospital superiors knew his history until November 1991: the director of pastoral care "didn't know when I talked to him. He knows now." Archdiocese of Chicago personnel file.

July and August 1992

A second man came forward, about a 1976 ski trip to Wisconsin during Bartz's Ascension years. Cardinal Bernardin wrote back in August, apologizing, and explaining that Bartz would stay in ministry because he was not a risk to young people: "if he had not shown the proper remorse and proper disposition to both reform his actions and follow out the program of treatment laid out for him, I would not have reassigned him." The man told the Tribune, a decade on: "He had multiple cases in his file." Chicago Tribune, June 20, 2002.

August 21 and September 9, 1993

The Archdiocese's new Professional Fitness Review Board finished its first-stage review and found "reasonable cause to suspect that Father Bartz engaged in sexual misconduct with a minor." The administrator had warned the Board that he often worked the graveyard shift and that "no one, practically speaking, in the Pediatrics Ward is aware of his situation." On September 9 Cardinal Bernardin signed a penal precept, "in order to preclude scandal," letting him stay on conditions: never alone with anyone under 18, no chaplaincy to patients under 18, the pediatrics chaplain told and asked to watch him. Archdiocese of Chicago personnel file.

June 2002

After the bishops' Dallas charter, the Tribune named Bartz as one of eight Chicago priests whose old cases were being re-examined; the Archdiocese confirmed he had been "accused of abusing several minors" in 1987. He had moved from Columbus Hospital, when it closed in 2001, to Advocate Ravenswood Medical Center. He resigned from the priesthood that June, "in anticipation of his removal from the ministry," at 53. He was never charged. Modern Healthcare, July 1, 2002.

March 20, 2006

The first public list. The Archdiocese put out the names of its own priests with substantiated allegations of sexual misconduct with minors, and there he is, one line among them: "Bartz, Richard Barry, 5/8/1974, Resigned 6/02". What substantiated means, the list says itself: "reasonable cause to believe that abuse occurred," which "is not a legal judgment." Archdiocese of Chicago list, March 20, 2006.

November 6, 2014

The Archdiocese released his personnel file with those of 35 other priests. Oak Park's Wednesday Journal summarised the Archdiocese's own case sheet: three allegations "of exposing genitals and touching boys while sleeping," incidents between 1976 and 1987, the principal's 1987 call to child-protection authorities, and a priest who stayed in the priesthood until 2002. Wednesday Journal, November 11, 2014.

May 23, 2023

The Illinois Attorney General's Report on Catholic Clergy Child Sex Abuse gives Bartz his own entry: at least 3 reported survivors; reported abuse in Chicago in 1985, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin in 1987, and Boston on an unknown date; first report 1987; restrictions and monitoring from 1987; removed and resigned 2002; laicized 2015. Illinois Attorney General, Richard Barry Bartz.

We checked this on September 11, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from May 23, 2023. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who answers for what Father Bartz is accused of

The Archdiocese of Chicago. Not the man. Laicized in 2015, never charged, and, as far as anything public shows, still alive. The Archdiocese's list dated February 10, 2025 has "Laicized" beside his name and nothing about a death. None of that is where a case lives. A case lives in what the Archdiocese knew and what it did next, and for once you don't have to guess, because it wrote it down and later handed the file over. It knew on August 21, 1987. It hoped DCFS would drop the matter, and was pleased when it did. It sent him to a hospital in 1988 and asked that the appointment not be printed. It did not tell the hospital's own director of pastoral care for three more years. Its review board found reasonable cause in 1993, and it kept him nine years more. That sequence is the negligence theory, in plain words: an employer that was told, kept quiet, and kept him.

Two honest things. First, we found no lawsuit and no settlement naming Bartz anywhere in the public record. Three reported survivors is a small file. This is an Archdiocese that says it's paid survivors more than $400 million since 2001, and a quiet file isn't a closed one. Second, age at the time decides which Illinois rule applies, and on this file the ages are messy: 17, 18 or 19, depending on who was doing the counting. That's a lawyer's call, not something to settle alone from a web page.

If your years were at Ascension, Transfiguration or the seminary, the Archdiocese is the defendant and the parish or seminary sits beside it. If you met him at Columbus Hospital, the Cabrini Shrine or Ravenswood, say so. The Archdiocese put him there, under its own restrictions, and who was told about those restrictions is the whole question.

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

Illinois took the deadline off in 2014. For childhood sexual abuse there is no statute of limitations left under 735 ILCS 5/13-202.2 as it has read since January 1, 2014. That part is real.

The catch is that the 2014 law did not reach back. A claim that had already run out under the old rules stayed run out; the Illinois courts have said so more than once. The rough line is 1983. Born that year or later and your claim was still alive when the law changed, so you can file on your age alone. Born earlier, and most people on this page were, since his parish years ran from 1974 to 1983 and his seminary years to 1988, and a lawyer needs two more facts: when you first connected what happened to the harm you carry, and what the Archdiocese knew and kept to itself. Illinois keeps that second door open when an institution concealed what it knew. On this name the concealment isn't a theory. It's a memo asking the Cardinal not to print his appointment.

So: for anyone born after 1982, probably no clock at all. For everyone born earlier, possibly a path, and one that runs through the Archdiocese's own paperwork. Either way it takes a conversation to know, not a guess.

Your situation still qualifies even if

It was not Bartz himself. Another priest, a seminary faculty member, someone at the parish. The case is against the institution either way.
You have never said it out loud, to anyone, in forty years.
You were an adult, just. Eighteen, nineteen. A different rule applies, not no rule.
A lawyer told you it was too late, years ago, and you took their word for it. Illinois changed the law in 2014, so ask again.
You live in Wisconsin, or Indiana, or anywhere else now. Most people who grew up in Oak Park or Wauconda do.

Where he was

Ascension Parish in Oak Park first, associate pastor, May 1974 to June 1979. Then Transfiguration Parish in Wauconda, associate pastor again, June 1979 to November 1983. From November 1983 to July 1988 he was on the faculty at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein, though after the August 1987 report he was out of the building. St. Eulalia Parish in Maywood, in residence, 1988 to 1993. Columbus Hospital in Lincoln Park, chaplain from July 1988 until it closed in 2001; from February 1992 he was living at the hospital. St. Frances Cabrini Shrine in Chicago, rector, March 1997 to July 2002. Advocate Ravenswood Medical Center, chaplain, 2001 to June 2002. And before any of it, a deacon at St. Marcelline in Schaumburg, in 1973. The Attorney General adds Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and Boston. A trip, a cottage at Wonder Lake, a friend's house? Tell us anyway.

Questions people are asking

Who was Father Richard Bartz?

Doc, to nearly everyone. A Chicago priest ordained May 8, 1974, an associate pastor in Oak Park and then Wauconda, then a seminary teacher at Mundelein. In August 1987 the Archdiocese was told he'd abused a 17-year-old on a trip. It pulled him from the seminary and, in 1988, made him a hospital chaplain. He stayed one, under restrictions, until June 2002, when he resigned, and the Church laicized him in 2015. The Attorney General's 2023 report, the state's count and not the Church's, counts at least three reported survivors for him.

Is it too late to ask?

Not necessarily, and the reason is a date. On January 1, 2014 Illinois took the time limit off childhood sexual abuse claims. The one catch: a claim that had already run out under the older rules stayed run out. Those can sometimes be reopened, but it takes discovery or concealment facts, which is the whole reason the form asks what year you were born and whether anybody was told. 18 or 19 at the time? Then a different rule, a shorter one. Which of these is yours, a lawyer decides. We don't.

Was Father Bartz ever charged with a crime?

No. The one call to DCFS, in August 1987, was made by the boy's school principal, not the Archdiocese, and DCFS said it would not pursue it because Bartz was not the boy's guardian. No police report, no charge, no criminal case appears anywhere in the public record, and as far as the record shows he is alive, laicized, in his late seventies. What exists is the Archdiocese's own finding, the Attorney General's entry, and his file.

What did the Archdiocese of Chicago know about Bartz, and when?

August 21, 1987, by its own file. Within a week it had him out of the seminary and was hoping, in writing, that DCFS would drop it. It put him in a hospital in July 1988 and asked the Cardinal not to publish the appointment. Then a second report, in 1992. Its review board found reasonable cause in 1993. He stayed a priest anyway, until June 2002.

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.