diff --git a/docs/releasenotes.html b/docs/releasenotes.html
index 5e617d58d..4b41a1c25 100644
--- a/docs/releasenotes.html
+++ b/docs/releasenotes.html
@@ -127,6 +127,10 @@
             to "error" element of XMLLogger output 
             (request 686336).</li>
 
+          <li class="body">Added line and column numbers 
+            to configuration parse exceptions
+            (request 714962).</li>
+
         </ul>
 
       <p class="body">
diff --git a/src/checkstyle/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/ConfigurationLoader.java b/src/checkstyle/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/ConfigurationLoader.java
index 7ff8f8112..0b9b4b57e 100644
--- a/src/checkstyle/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/ConfigurationLoader.java
+++ b/src/checkstyle/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/ConfigurationLoader.java
@@ -36,6 +36,7 @@ import com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.api.Configuration;
 import org.xml.sax.Attributes;
 import org.xml.sax.InputSource;
 import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
+import org.xml.sax.SAXParseException;
 
 /**
  * Loads a configuration from a standard configuration XML file.
@@ -221,6 +222,11 @@ public final class ConfigurationLoader
             throw new CheckstyleException(
                 "unable to parse " + aConfig, e);
         }
+        catch (SAXParseException e) {
+            throw new CheckstyleException("unable to parse "
+                    + aConfig + " - " + e.getMessage() + ":" + e.getLineNumber()
+                    + ":" + e.getColumnNumber(), e);
+        }
         catch (SAXException e) {
             throw new CheckstyleException("unable to parse "
                     + aConfig + " - " + e.getMessage(), e);
diff --git a/src/tests/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/ConfigurationLoaderTest.java b/src/tests/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/ConfigurationLoaderTest.java
index 86b64dad8..5dd886edc 100644
--- a/src/tests/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/ConfigurationLoaderTest.java
+++ b/src/tests/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/ConfigurationLoaderTest.java
@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ public class ConfigurationLoaderTest extends TestCase
             assertTrue(
                 ex.getMessage().endsWith(
                     "Attribute \"name\" is required and must be specified "
-                        + "for element type \"property\"."));
+                        + "for element type \"property\".:8:41"));
         }
     }
 
@@ -61,7 +61,7 @@ public class ConfigurationLoaderTest extends TestCase
             assertTrue(
                 ex.getMessage().endsWith(
                     "Attribute \"value\" is required and must be specified "
-                        + "for element type \"property\"."));
+                        + "for element type \"property\".:8:41"));
         }
     }
 
@@ -75,7 +75,7 @@ public class ConfigurationLoaderTest extends TestCase
             assertTrue(
                 ex.getMessage().endsWith(
                     "Attribute \"name\" is required and must be specified "
-                        + "for element type \"module\"."));
+                        + "for element type \"module\".:7:23"));
         }
     }
 
@@ -89,7 +89,7 @@ public class ConfigurationLoaderTest extends TestCase
             assertTrue(
                 ex.getMessage().endsWith(
                     "Document root element \"property\", must match DOCTYPE "
-                        + "root \"module\"."));
+                        + "root \"module\".:7:38"));
         }
     }