Tutu Leads Celebration of Freedom : Religion: South African archbishop shares his joy over elections with a Pasadena church that helped fight apartheid.

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu returned Sunday to a Pasadena church long active in the anti-apartheid movement to celebrate this spring’s historic elections in South Africa.

“We are free, all of us! Blacks and whites together,” Tutu told an overflow crowd at All Saints Episcopal Church, where many parishioners had supported boycotts and other tactics to end white minority rule.

Preaching from the pulpit during a festive morning service, Tutu noted the momentous changes in South Africa since his last visit to the church in 1990.

“When I was here last, we were talking of the hope of something happening,” recalled the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. “And now, a miracle . . . unfolding before our very eyes.”

Tutu, 62, the archbishop of Cape Town and Anglican Primate of Southern Africa, is touring the United States for the first time since the April multiracial elections that led to the swearing in last month of Nelson Mandela as South Africa’s first black president.

The cleric is midway through an 18-day trip that included a stop Saturday at a U.S.-sponsored investment conference in Atlanta, where he called on the West to provide his country with financial support. He will travel to Ohio, Illinois and New York.

Tutu has visited All Saints twice before, the first time in 1984, and his return Sunday was imbued with poignancy because of the support he has received from the church. Its rector, staff members and some parishioners have visited Tutu’s archdiocese.

About 2,500 people crowded into the pews to hear him speak at two morning services, greeting him by clapping and singing, “I’m gonna lay down my sword and shield, down by the riverside. . . . I ain’t gonna study war no more.”

Tutu grinned and clapped in response as he stood under the arching wood beams of the Gothic-style church.

Churchgoers milling on the lawn after the service said they were astonished by the speed of the changes that have swept South Africa.

Brian Sellers-Petersen, who worked on South African issues for the church and the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles during the 1980s--and who lived in that nation for several years--said he once hoped simply that his children would see an end to apartheid.

“This feels like a full circle,” he said. “I never thought I’d see this day.”