CHICAGO (AP) – Former Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan told a predominantly black Catholic church that people who believe in God need not be divided, delivering a message of religious unity that has marked his recent addresses.
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(Photo: AP / M. Spencer Green)Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan speaks at Saint Sabina Catholic Church Friday, May 25, 2007 in Chicago.
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, the black Muslim leader 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 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 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.”
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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