St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 27

ST fj ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH Thursday november 29, 2001 SECTION Greg Freeman is on leave. His column will resume in January. "You don't have to budget for a movie, but a concert can cost three figures and for many, that's not pocket change." Gary Bongiovanni, editor in chief of Pollster Oflili Syphilis cases keep dropping in St. Louis issoun Synod is assailed over Coordination of services, extra money are credited P3Y events Criticism involves prayers with other faiths and denominations (I ft i "Sl 4, By Patricia Rice Post-Dispatch Religion Writer The new president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod is facing efforts to toss him from church membership and its leadership because he supported a member of his denomination who prayed with members of other faiths and denominations in a post-Sept.

11 event in New York. President Gerald Kieschnick is also facing charges from a church pastor for praying publicly with a leader of another Lutheran denomination near New York's ground zero. A possible ouster is far from inevitable. Some By Deborah L. Shelton 0 the Post-Dispatch St.

Louis has dropped off the list of top 10 places in the nation in reported syphilis cases, according to data released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health officials said extra federal money and better coordination of screening, prevention and treatment services had taken the city from No. 8 in primary and secondary syphilis cases in 1999 to No. 26 last year. No cases were reported in St.

Louis County. Some counties in the Metro East area experienced increases in syphilis, but the numbers were low. Public health officials said they were not alarmed. The downward trend in St. Louis occurred as rates of the disease fell nationwide to the lowest ever recorded.

The decline nationally broke a 44-year pattern in which syphilis cases have risen and fallen in seven-to 10-year cycles. Rates last peaked in 1990. The CDC said 5,979 cases of the sexually transmitted disease were reported in the United States last year down 10 percent from 1999 and about 30 percent from 1998, the year the federal agency announced a national syphilis elimination plan. CDC officials credited the plan and heightened efforts by local public health departments and community-based groups for the decline. The CDC plan aims to improve surveillance, screening and coordination of syphilis prevention and treatment programs.

St. Louis was one of 31 communities across the country that received special funding from the CDC to reduce the disease rate. Syphilis is easily treated, but if untreated can be fatal. It also can be passed to fetuses and can increase the likelihood of transmission of HIV Federal officials hope to reduce syphilis cases to fewer than 1,000 nationwide, or fewer than one case per 100,000 people. See Syphilis, C5 pastors say the charges are part of a political battle within the Kirkwood-based denomination.

The confrontation centers on the denomination's rules that prevent much ecumenical or inter-faith activity. The 2.6 million-member denomination's church law allows its pastors to lead services jointly only with clergy members in denominations that are JAMIE RECTOR POST-DISPATCH U2 lead singer Bono performs during the band's concert Wednesday night at the Sawis Center. Dennis Petrullo, general manager of the Sawis Center, said the show was 2,000 seats shy of a sellout. Fans paid $45 to $130 to see the Irish quartet on the last leg of its North American tour. Fans clamor to see U2 here, but band's success defies concert industry's slump linked with the Kirkwood body in Kieschnick a formal fellowship agreement, church president basically overseas Lutheran bodies.

Pastors' conferences in four regions, including Southern Illinois and Central Illinois, have passed resolutions questioning Kieschnick's actions. Two individual pastors have filed formal charges that put another St. Louisan into the controversy. The two pastors have separately asked the Rev. President James Kalthoff, the denomination's district president for the state of Missouri what other Lutheran denominations call a bishop to discipline Kieschnick, who lives in Kalthoff 's district.

In response to such charges, district presidents can expel or reprimand members. At issue now is whether Kalthoff can take action against his superior, Kieschnick. The charges erupted from an event Sept. 23 sponsored by New York City called A Prayer for America, at Yankee Stadium. Clergy members were on the stage with celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and James Earl Jones and politicians such as New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former President Bill Clinton.

After twice conferring with Kieschnick by phone, the Rev. David Benke, president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod's Atlantic District, said a 10-sentence prayer. Other Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Sikhs offered prayers. That upset some Lutheran pastors. Benke "participated in idolatry, by participating with non-Christians," said the Rev.

David Oberdieck, pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Lebanon, and one of the men who filed the charges. See Synod, C5 By Diane Toroian Of the Post-Dispatch Determined to get an upfront view of the supergroup U2, fans with general admission tickets withstood hours of dreary weather and puzzled stares Wednesday outside Sawis Center. By 7:30 p.m., they were joined by 16,000 concertgoers who paid from $45 to $130 to see the Irish quartet on the last leg of its North American tour. But the long lines and clapping times, when people put off buying big-ticket items, they still had a little left over for a concert or dinner out," said Pat Hagin, an industry veteran who manages the Pageant nightclub in the Delmar Loop. "That seems to have changed." Pollstar, the industry's top trade publication, reports that the first six months of this year saw a 12.3 percent dip in ticket sales for the top 50 touring acts compared with the same period last year that's a drop of 2 million tickets.

See U2, C6 hands paint a misleading picture of the concert industry. Venues large and small across the country report declining attendance and disappointing revenues. The public's boredom, with overexposed artists and its lingering unease with large places certainly have contributed to the downturn. But the soft economy has hit the concert industry in ways that surprise even experts. "I think the conventional wisdom has been that the concert business is recession-proof.

Even in bad Incidence of syphilis 1999 2000 St. Louis 23 8 Madison County 1 5 St. Clair County 2 4 Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Mayor's ward redisricting plan removes Tyus from power base A handwritten pardon moves back to Illinois Slay prepared proposal expecting court challenge in the 20th and two other racially mixed wards the 6th and the 17th. The changes are aimed at giving blacks a reasonable chance of winning 14 of the 28 seats on the board, although white incumbents are expected to run for two of them. In each of 13 wards, blacks would make up nearly 65 percent or more of the population.

Blacks made up 51.2 percent of the citywide population in last year's census. Slay submitted the map late Tuesday. He said, "It's balanced, it's fair, it complies with the Voting Rights Act." The plan won't be debated until Dec. 14. Tyus said that even if the changes would give black candidates a better chance than the earlier map, another issue she would raise is that the map would carve up the constituency of a minority-group incumbent hers.

See Slay, CIS "It's a magnificent document, but it has no direct connection to St. Louis," Filippine said during a ceremony at Springfield's Old State Capitol building, where Lincoln once served as a state legislator. "This is its proper home." Filippine presented the brittle, yellowing document to Illinois officials, including Lura Lynn Ryan, wife of Gov. George Ryan. It ultimately will be displayed in the new Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.

Elizabeth Shorter was a domestic servant who worked in the Washington home of shoemaker William Pruett. In Shorter's appeal to Lincoln for clemency, she admitted that in "an evil hour," she had an affair with Pruett and had a baby, who later died. Shorter claimed Pruett's wife paid her $400 to keep quiet about the affair. Pruett, incensed when Shorter tried to sue him for child support, alleged that the $400 was stolen and had Shorter arrested for larceny. She was convicted Nov.

3. On Nov. 5, just days before he was re-elected president, Lincoln wrote one sentence granting Shorter "a full and unconditional pardon." The pardon and a related document were owned for years by the late St. Louis-based Judge Roy Harper, who gave them to Filippine. "It shows his (Lincoln's) compassion and his care for people," said Filippine.

"It belongs to the public." By Kevin McDermott Post-Dispatch Springfield Bureau SPRINGFIELD, 111. A presidential pardon is headed here. A young woman who accepted what she thought was hush money from an affair in 1864 instead found herself in prison for theft. But her one-year sentence lasted only two days before President Abraham Lincoln pardoned her. The owner of the handwritten pardon donated it Wednesday to the Illinois State Historical Library.

Senior U.S. District Judge Edward L. Filippine, who sits in St. Louis, decided the document didn't belong in St. Louis' new federal courthouse.

By Mark Schlinkmann Regional Political Correspondent Alderman Sharon Tyus would still be the big loser under a revised ward redistricting plan submitted by Mayor Francis Slay to the Board of Aldermen. The plan would shift Tyus' 20th Ward far from her political base in a part of north St. Louis where 98 percent of the residents are black to a racially mixed part of southeast St. Louis. That also was the thrust of an earlier version.

But to make the plan more defensible against a challenge planned by Tyus in federal court, the revision increases -j-the number of black residents.