Talk with ministers turns to persecuted leaders

Famous persecuted leaders, including Nelson Mandela and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., were reportedly on Gov. Rod Blagojevich's mind Friday morning as he prayed with ministers in the aftermath of his ground-shaking arrest on federal corruption charges.

Sitting in the governor's home office lined with scores of books, the Rev. Ira Acree of the Greater St. John Bible Church said his conversation with the governor focused on the civil rights leader who was jailed and hounded by the FBI as well as the South African president who spent 27 years behind bars.

"We talked about great leaders. We talked about those who were persecuted," said Acree, who, along with other Chicago ministers, has worked with the governor before on social justice causes.

Acree said the conversation was in part prompted by books the governor has on top leaders from around the world stacked in his office.

Acree said he and two other Chicago ministers talked and prayed with the governor for about 20 minutes but never directly talked about the charges against him or his plans for the future as reporters and camera crews waited in the cold outside his home.

"We didn't come to offer any political advice, nor did we try to," he said. "We are ministers, and we came to pray with him."

Acree did say the governor discussed trying to get a legal and political consultation team in place but feels as if everything is closing in on him and that he's not getting "any space or chance to sort anything out."

"He did say... at the end of the day the truth will come out, you are only hearing excerpts of everything (and) when you hear each chapter completely written it will come out and he will be vindicated," Acree said.

Acree said he was moved to call the governor Thursday to offer spiritual guidance. He said he felt particularly bad for the governor's two daughters caught in the spotlight of their father's scandal.

"Those children didn't ask for any of this," he said. "That has to take a toll. They are innocent."

He declined to talk about the children's state during his visit, but he did say the governor was "upbeat and very gracious" as they drank coffee and juice.

The ministers told the governor that God has a way of turning bad situations into positive action.

"Before praying with him, we basically told him that God knows how to transform situations ... to bring the good out of it," Acree told the Daily Herald Friday afternoon. "We told him that our Christian faith tells us that even when we are engulfed in storms and adversity, that God knows how to make us better people."

"One thing we do know is this guy is not a monster," Acree said. "He is a man with a wife and two children."

Shortly after Acree and the other two ministers left, a fourth minister, the Rev. Leonard Barr of Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church, arrived at the governor's house with his wife, Rita.

After leaving, he said they were invited by the governor and that the two "prayed that he would continue to be a great governor for the state of Illinois."

• Daily Herald news services contributed to this report.

Talk: Minsters told governor that God has a way of turning things around