Farrakhan delivers speech at Chicago Catholic church

Karen Hawkins

CHICAGO — Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan last Friday told a predominantly black Catholic church on the city’s South Side that people who believe in God need not be divided, delivering a message of religious unity that has marked his recent addresses.

Speaking with a strong voice and gesturing firmly from the pulpit as he addressed a crowd of about 1,100 at St. Sabina Catholic Church, Farrakhan looked and sounded little like a man recovering from illness.

“I feel very honored to stand in this place,” he said. “I feel very honored by the media being struck by my being in a Catholic church with a white pastor.”

St. Sabina’s Rev. Michael L. Pfleger told his predominantly black congregation that Farrakhan’s presence at the church is “only strange to people who don’t know Minister Louis Farrakhan.”

“He’s spoken here many times and St. Sabina is a home for Louis Farrakhan,” said Pfleger, who called Farrakhan “a gift from God to a sick, sick world.”

Farrakhan, who ceded leadership of the Nation of Islam last year to an executive board while recovering from complications of prostate cancer, slowly has been making his way back into the public eye.

The 74-year-old made what he called his final public address Feb. 25, when he delivered a two-hour speech to tens of thousands in Detroit in observance of the Nation of Islam’s annual Saviour’s Day.

But he since has delivered several intimate lectures to Muslims at the Mosque Maryam in Chicago, the organization’s headquarters. He also has given interviews to Arab TV Al-Jazeera, ABC’s Nightline and CNN.

For his wide-ranging address last Friday, titled “The Presence of the Kingdom of God,” Farrakhan said he left his Quran at his seat and preached from his Christian Bible.

“I hate the division … between people who believe in God,” he said. “I love the Bible, I love the Quran and I don’t know how I can come in a Christian church with a Christian pastor and not speak from the book that Christians believe in, because I believe in it as well.”

Minister Terry Green, a seminary student in the audience for the speech, said she appreciated that Farrakhan stressed the need to view the world as “one united faith instead of separate faiths.”

“He inspires me,” she said. “I want to preach.”

Farrakhan last year passed leadership of the Nation of Islam to an executive board because of poor health. He wrote in a Sept. 11 letter to followers that he had lost 20 pounds because of complications from an ulcer in the anal area and was anemic.

In January he was released from the hospital after a 12-hour abdominal operation to correct damage caused by treatment for prostate cancer.

Farrakhan did not address his illness during his speech, but a dance group called “The Spirit of David Dancers” performed a song titled “Healing” and dedicated it to his recovery.

(Associated Press)