Priest who mocked Clinton draws spotlight -- again

CHICAGO — He's a white priest at a largely black church. He's held hands with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. He's been arrested dozens of times and battled anyone he thinks has wronged his parish — from gun dealers to a local Catholic sports league.

The Rev. Michael Pfleger now is something else: the latest thorn in the side of likely Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

Racially charged comments Pfleger made last week mocking Obama rival Hillary Rodham Clinton — as a guest at Obama's church, no less — triggered a quick response from the Illinois senator, who wants nothing to do with a racial firestorm like the one generated by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

While Pfleger is not nearly as close to Obama as Wright had been, the priest has donated to the candidate's state Senate and presidential campaigns and sat on a Catholics for Obama committee until a few weeks ago. When Obama was in the Illinois Legislature, he helped land more than $200,000 in state grants for outreach programs run by Pfleger's church.

In his Sunday reference to Clinton, Pfleger said in a mock version of her voice: "I'm white. I'm entitled. There's a black man stealing my show." He explained that 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 Father Pfleger's divisive, backward-looking rhetoric." Pfleger quickly apologized, saying the "words are inconsistent with Senator Obama's life and message."

"I am deeply sorry if they offended Sen. Clinton or anyone else who saw them," he said in a statement.

He did not return several calls for comment Friday.

But Cardinal Francis George of the Archdiocese of Chicago issued a news release in which he criticized both Pfleger's involvement in a political campaign and a "personal attack" on Clinton. George said Pfleger has promised not to campaign or mention any candidate by name.

The relationship between Obama, a one-time community activist on Chicago's South Side, and the outspoken priest at the activist St. Sabina Church has been a long one.

As a state senator, Obama secured two grants related to Pfleger's church — one for $100,000 to repair The Ark community center at the church in 2000 and the other for $125,000 for computers at the church's employment resource center.

For his part, Pfleger, 59, has donated $1,500 to Obama's campaigns for state office and another $1,500 to his presidential campaign.

Aides say Obama rarely has visited St. Sabina, although he cited Pfleger, along with Wright, as one of his spiritual advisers in a 2004 Chicago Sun-Times story. Pfleger helped Obama's Iowa campaign by taking part in a faith forum.

Pfleger has invited criticism with his words and actions in the past, even before Sunday's fiery sermon at Trinity United Church of Christ.

He has hit the streets, sometimes with busloads of parishioners in tow, to protest Jerry Springer's television show, stores that sell drug paraphernalia and gun violence. He's been arrested for acts of civil disobedience, such as smearing red paint on alcohol and tobacco billboards. He and the Rev. Jesse Jackson were arrested last year during a protest of a suburban gun shop; charges were dropped.

"He speaks his mind, whatever his mind holds," Mark Donahue, head of the Fraternal Order of Police in Chicago, told the Chicago Tribune last year.

Pfleger's fight to make the community safe is an intensely personal one. He has adopted three children, one of whom was gunned down near the church in 1998.

Pfleger has urged parishioners to pay prostitutes and drug users so they could share their faith with them. He has offered his church as a place where controversial figures can express their views. Farrakhan spoke there, as did the Rev. Al Sharpton.

At times, there has been talk of diocesan officials reassigning Pfleger, but he is immensely popular in his 2,100-person parish and has helped it thrive over the past quarter-century as many other congregations have struggled.

The Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post contributed to this report.