Rev. Michael Pfleger, the firebrand pastor of St. Sabina’s Catholic Church, is being given additional duties outside his South Side parish but isn’t leaving there, the Archdiocese of Chicago said Tuesday.
Instead, Pfleger will remain at St. Sabina’s but will share the pastor’s duties there, will become temporary administrator of a Southwest Side church whose pastor was brutally beaten and robbed in December and also will help develop new anti-violence initiatives for the archdiocese.
“Effective immediately, Fr. Pfleger has been named the temporary administrator of St. Margaret of Scotland Parish,” whose priest was beaten and robbed last year, a written statement from the archdiocese said.
“Additionally, Fr. Pfleger has agreed to take on a new responsibility in serving as the archdiocesan representative for newly developing anti-violence initiatives that will include a particular focus on issues surrounding gun violence.”
The statement said Cardinal Francis George was announcing the new duties “after consulting with Rev. Michael L. Pfleger.”
As of July 1, Pfleger, the longtime pastor of St. Sabina’s, will be co-pastor there with the Rev. Thulani D. Magwaza, who is now associate pastor.
Rev. Daniel J. Mallette, the pastor at St. Margaret of Scotland, will remain as pastor emeritus, but “a new past for St. Margaret of Scotland will be named on July 1,” the archdiocese said.
Mallette’s ribs were broken, and he was left with a black eye when two masked intruders broke in to his Southwest Side church in the middle of the night in early December, woke the 80-year-old priest, told him to shut up, beat him and forced him to open a safe and stole $500 meant for the poor — and, when they were done, asked that he pray for their souls.
Which he did.
Mallette, who marched with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s, has helped keep St. Margaret’s one of the city’s most ethnically and racially diverse Catholic churches since 1977.
Pfleger is a well-known figure in Chicago, having led headline-grabbing campaigns against tobacco and alcohol billboards and the sale of drug paraphernalia in inner-city neighborhoods and against suburban gun shops.
He also has challenged rappers whose lyrics he says degrade women, has picketed “The Jerry Springer Show” for doing the same and blasted radio shock jock Howard Stern as sleazy and disrespectful of African Americans.
Most recently, Pfleger made news last month when he criticized ABC-TV’s reality televisions show “The Bachelor,” saying: “This whole concept, I mean, how sick is this that 25 women are throwing their bodies and their hearts at this one man, who is having all these little romantic runs with the different women here and there, and the women are doing whatever they gotta do to try and get him. How degrading is this for women?”
Pfleger has long been at odds with George, who briefly suspended him from his duties at St. Sabina last spring.