Lest We Forget Rev. Michael Pfleger

Friends and advisers, such as the Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina Roman Catholic Church in the Auburn- Gresham community on the South Side, who has known Obama for the better part of 20 years, help him keep that compass set, he says.
“I always have felt in him this consciousness that, at the end of the day, with all of us, you’ve got to face God,” Pfleger says of Obama. “Faith is key to his life, no question about it. It is central to who he is, and not just in his work in the political field, but as a man, as a black man, as a husband, as a father…. I don’t think he could easily divorce his faith from who he is.”

During an address at an anti-gun rally in front of Chuck’s, Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina’s Church, exhorted the crowd to “drag” shop owner, John Riggio, from his shop “like a rat” and “snuff” him. Rev. Pfleger went on to tell the crowd that legislators that vote against gun control legislation should be “snuffed” as well. As many know, “snuff” is slang for especially violent murder.
“We’re gonna snuff out legislators who are voting [garbled] against our gun laws and we’re coming for you because we are not going to sit idly.”

Nearly five decades later, the two men now say that former choir director, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, molested them dozens of times over several years beginning in the early 1970s. The brothers said they were sexually abused in Pfleger’s room at three churches, beginning at Precious Blood and including St. Sabina on the South Side, where the well-known priest has been assigned since his 1975 ordination.
The men, who are in their early 60s and live in Texas, said the abuse was a secret they had never revealed, not even to each other, until the younger of the two filed a complaint Jan. 4 to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago. The archdiocese announced the next day that Pfleger had agreed to step away from ministry while an allegation of abuse was investigated.
“I go back in my young mind and I say to myself, ‘What’s happening here?’ And I ask myself, ‘What do I do, you know, other than freeze?’” said the older brother, a 63-year-old former police sergeant and U.S. Air Force veteran, choking back tears. “You lay there and you hold your breath and hope for the best.”
The men have asked not to be publicly named, in part to protect the privacy of relatives who still live in Chicago and, they said, fear possible fallout from supporters of Pfleger. The older brother filed his complaint with the archdiocese Friday.
The older brother said Pfleger began molesting him about a year after they met, when he was 12, and continued from 1970 to 1976, in dozens of incidents at Precious Blood, Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Glenview, St. Sabina and the Mundelein seminary.
The man said he often tried to pretend he was sleeping during the abuse, which included acts of penetration, according to his complaint. The two were always alone in the bedroom during the incidents, he told the Tribune. There were no threats, discussions or apologies afterward, he said.