At 2:15 a.m. Wednesday, Father Michael Pfleger woke up to knocking on the rectory door at St. Sabina.
It was the police, telling him someone had just tied a shirt to the front doors of his church's gymnasium, then set it on fire. Pfleger said the news didn't necessarily surprise him.
"I get a lot of hate calls, I get a lot of hate letters and emails," Pfleger said. "That goes with the program."
Chicago Police are investigating what they're calling an "attempted arson" outside the South Side building.
The small fire caused mostly cosmetic damage and no one was injured. But the incident came just hours after Father Pfleger, one of Chicago's most outspoken critics of gangs and guns, held a rally to close down a nearby store that's a gang hangout.
"One of the police officers said it very well could be because it was immediately after that [event] yesterday, and that store is one of the hangouts of one of the gangs here," said Pfleger.
It's the third act of vandalism to the outside of St. Sabina in recent weeks.
"We've had twice in the last 6-8 weeks where we've had something," Pfleger said. "The other two times with bags of feces that were tied: one to the church door, one to the school door."
He said if the vandalism is someone trying to end him a message, he will not be deterred from continuing to deliver his message against violence and gangs.
"We want the shooting to stop and we're gonna continue to do what we do until the violence ends," said Pfleger.
Bomb and arson units are investigating this as an attempted arson. No arrests have been made.
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