UNITED STATES:The outspoken priest has known Barack Obama for 20 years, writes Derek Kravitzin Washington.
FR MICHAEL L Pfleger has never shied from controversy. But after the Catholic priest made racially charged comments mocking Senator Hillary Clinton, Pfleger had to make a promise to church officials to keep quiet.
The leader of Chicago's Catholic archdiocese on Friday sharply criticised Pfleger, a former spiritual adviser to Clinton's opponent for the Democratic nomination, Senator Barack Obama, for making fun of Clinton during two sermons last Sunday.
Saying he wants "to avoid months of turmoil in the church", Cardinal Francis George secured a promise from Pfleger that he will stop commenting on the presidential campaign.
"The Catholic Church does not endorse political candidates," George said in a statement. "Consequently, while a priest must speak to political issues that are also moral, he may not endorse candidates nor engage in partisan campaigning."
Clinton's campaign called on Obama to renounce comments Pfleger made during sermons before packed congregations at Chicago's Trinity Church of Christ and at St Sabina Catholic Church, where he has presided since 1981. "We remain disappointed that Senator Obama didn't specifically reject Father Pfleger's despicable comments about Senator Clinton," Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said. "We assume that he will."
On the Obama campaign's website, a "faith testimonial" from Pfleger that was online several weeks ago, in which he said Obama had the "intellect" to be president and likened him to Robert Kennedy, was taken down when the controversy over his comments erupted. The pastor's name was also removed from a list of more than two dozen priests and scholars on the senator's National Catholic Advisory Council, which is designed to court Catholic voters.
Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said Pfleger voluntarily stepped down from the advisory post "a couple weeks ago". It was unclear why he resigned, LaBolt said.
Pfleger, whose parish is in Chicago's mostly black Auburn-Gresham community, said last year that he would "snuff out" a gun shop owner if he didn't stop selling firearms to children.
He commissioned a large mural of a black Jesus and a giant neon "JESUS" sign to be hung in his ornate church on West 78th Place, riling the traditionally conservative Chicago archdiocese.
And Pfleger (59) has invited Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to speak at the church and has ardently defended the controversial minister.
In his Sunday reference to Clinton, Pfleger said he intended to expose "white entitlement and supremacy wherever it raises its head".
When the priest's comments hit YouTube, Obama immediately said he was "deeply disappointed in Fr Pfleger's divisive, backward-looking rhetoric". Pfleger apologised, saying the "words are inconsistent with Senator Obama's life and message".
"I am deeply sorry if they offended Senator Clinton or anyone else who saw them," he said in a statement.
Pfleger has known Obama for more than 20 years. Obama has called him a close spiritual adviser, and Pfleger broke with many area religious leaders to support him during an unsuccessful run in 1999 against Republican Bobby Rush. An online promotional video for St Sabina shows a palms-waving Obama during a Sunday service.
Despite the fallout from comments made by the Rev Jeremiah Wright Jr., a close friend of Pfleger, the priest had remained visible in Obama's campaign.
Pfleger was among a small group of politically well-connected preachers who counted themselves among Obama's earliest supporters, joining him just as the young lawyer surfaced in the hard-knocks world of Chicago politics.
Their financial and political support - first garnered after Obama routinely met with pastors and religious leaders as a community organiser in the mid-1980s - proved important in helping him win his first state Senate race, in 1996.
"He built a relationship with the church leaders based on their life stories, which they would share with him," said Gerald Kellman, who hired Obama as an organiser for the Developing Communities Project in 1985. "He appealed to the injustice and the inspiration, which they had encountered in their lives."
Pfleger was impressed with Obama's work as a community organiser and supported his ideas on low-income housing and unemployment. "You have to remember, Pfleger's a community organiser, too," said Dwight Hopkins, a theology professor at the University of Chicago and a parishioner at Trinity. "He saw some part of himself in him."
Pfleger, who has "deep support" from community leaders on Chicago's South Side, is regarded as a maverick who has warred with the archdiocese on various issues. He still serves as the church's public face on social justice issues, such as police brutality, homelessness and education, said Hopkins.
But his comments on Sunday may have "crossed the line," Hopkins said. "What he said is not generally what we hear from the pulpit at Trinity."
Pfleger gave Obama's state Senate campaign $1,500 between October 1995 and April 2001. He contributed $1,000 in 2004 to Obama's Senate run and donated $1,500 over the past year and a half to his presidential campaign.
St Sabina has also been the beneficiary of earmarked funds that Obama pushed through while in the state Senate. In 2001, the church received funding for its programmes, including $100,000 for repairs to the ARK, a community youth centre that Pfleger founded, and $125,000 for computers and a new facility for St Sabina's Employment Resource Center. The Obama campaign said the money went to much-needed causes - for at risk youth and job training.
(LA Times-Washington Post)