The indomitable Micheal Pfleger, the priest I know

One of the most vivid, and perhaps most telling, memories I have of the Rev. Michael Pfleger is the image of him standing on top of - not in front of or behind - the wooden altar that's shaped like an African drum inside the gothic sanctuary of his South Side parish, St. Sabina's.Pfleger, in robes trimmed with Kente-patterned cloth, is sweating and shouting into a microphone as about 200 people, many of them addicts in various stages of recovery, ring the altar where he is perched and pelt him with packs of cigarettes.

"Come on, give 'em up!" Pfleger, once a three-pack-a-day smoker, shouts at the group assembled in the sanctuary, with its enormous mural of a Black Jesus with outstretched hands adorning the back wall. "God didn't deliver you from cocaine and alcohol so you could be addicted to nicotine!

"God loves you, God loves you," Pfleger cries, reaching out to gently pat the head of one worshiper. "Some of you haven't heard it in a long time, that someone loves you."

Pfleger, 59, has spent the 33 years of his priesthood among the impoverished Black community on Chicago's South Side creating a ministry that's based in equal parts on a thoroughly Catholic understanding of the social gospel and its notion of God's preferential option for the poor, and the not-so-Catholic belief in salvation by grace, through faith - period.

At the same time, Pfleger, who said he became a born-again Christian more than 30 years ago, also has built a public reputation for being a loudmouth rebel (some say renegade) - a rabble-rousing, bishop-defying troublemaker.

Over the years, he's been arrested more than three dozen times for civil disobedience, including citations for scaling and defacing billboards for alcohol and tobacco products that he said are unfairly marketed to poor blacks.

Along his unique spiritual journey, Pfleger has made a lot of enemies and acquired a few interesting traveling companions, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, poet Maya Angelou, actor and singer Harry Belafonte, the Rev. Al Sharpton and Black liberation icon James Cone.

Sen. Barack Obama's controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is one of Pfleger's closest friends. In fact, Pfleger credits Wright with teaching him how to preach in the fiery style that landed him in hot water and resulted in an involuntary leave of absence from St. Sabina. (Many of his parishioners and other fans worried that the "temporary leave" was a guise to remove Pfleger permanently, but George later assured the flock that their pastor would return to the pulpit on June 16.)

When a teenage Pfleger rode his bike to hear Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak in Marquette Park, he watched in horror as whites in the crowd - including some parents he knew from the neighborhood - hurled racial epithets and, eventually, rocks, bottles and firecrackers at the civil rights leader.

Pfleger now quotes King almost as often as he quotes Scripture, lacing his sermons and casual conversation with King's musings on faith, race and humanity. Pfleger remains close to the King family; when King's widow, Coretta, died in 2007, her children asked Pfleger to deliver one of the eulogies at her funeral in Atlanta.

As a seminarian, Pfleger's education in Black culture continued as he worked side-by-side on community projects with the Black Panther Party on Chicago's West Side. His first parish assignment after his ordination in 1975 was at St. Sabina, a former Irish Catholic stronghold that had dwindled to fewer than 300 as the surrounding neighborhood's racial demographic changed.

As a young associate priest, Pfleger began to incorporate Black culture and liberation theology, raising up Black leadership within the parish and, as a result, fueling the White exodus.

St. Sabina is now one of the most vibrant parishes in the Chicago archdiocese, drawing more than 2,000 to its Sunday morning Masses that go on for more than three hours.

Pfleger continues his life's work undeterred (if momentarily silenced) - pushing, cajoling, protesting, shouting, screaming and praying for racial reconciliation and the fulfillment of what he called, in that now-infamous sermon at Trinity United Church of Christ last month, "the unanswered prayer of Jesus."

Cathleen Falsani is the former religion reporter and now a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and Religion News Service. She has covered Pfleger for more than 10 years.