Controversial archbishop excommunicated
ROME – Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, the provocative and colorful African prelate known for exorcisms, mass healing ceremonies and temporarily breaking with the church to marry a Korean acupuncturist, was excommunicated Tuesday by the Vatican.
Pope Benedict XVI signed off on the most serious punishment the Roman Catholic Church can mete out, apparently the final chapter in Milingo’s bizarre, tumultuous story spanning more than two decades.
The rare edict came after Milingo presided over the “installation” in Washington, D.C., of four married men as bishops this week. The ceremony was intended to dramatize Milingo’s campaign, called Married Priests Now, to end celibacy rules for Catholic priests. Neither the Archdiocese of Washington nor the Vatican recognized as bishops the men whom Milingo held a ceremony to consecrate.
That act was the final straw for Vatican officials who have scolded, cajoled and counseled Milingo over the years. Tuesday, the Vatican announced the excommunication, the first of a senior prelate in nearly 20 years, and asked for prayer in “these moments of ecclesiastical suffering.”
By advocating an end to mandatory celibacy for priests and with his long history of defiance, Milingo was “spreading division and confusion among the faithful,” the Vatican said, adding that the bishop was guilty of “irregularity and of progressively open rupture of communion with the church.”
Technically, Milingo, 76, who was named a bishop in Zambia in 1969, can restore himself to good standing with the church if he repents and disavows his actions, but he lately has seemed bent on mounting a challenge to papal authority.
“Representatives at various levels of the church have attempted, in vain, to contact Archbishop Milingo to dissuade him from continuing in actions that provoke scandal,” the Vatican statement said. The Holy See “had hoped he would rethink his actions and return to full communion with the pope. Unfortunately, these latest developments have distanced such hopes.”
Milingo, in Washington, was “reflecting and praying,” a spokesman, Prince Pambi, said by telephone. Pambi added that Milingo said his intention was to help “married priests who are suffering and help the Catholic Church understand them.”
Susan Gibbs, a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Washington, said Milingo’s actions in attempting to name bishops without Vatican approval were “clearly illicit.”
The ceremony took place on Sunday at the Imani Temple on Capitol Hill, site of a one-time Baptist Church that is now run by George Augustus Stallings Jr., a former Catholic priest who left the church in 1989.
Stallings is one of the four men Milingo said he was ordaining. The Vatican said the four also were being excommunicated. All belong to a breakaway church; they are, in addition to Stallings: Peter Paul Brennan, of New York; Patrick Trujillo, of Newark, N.J.; and Joseph Gouthro, of Las Vegas.
Milingo, born in a village in what is today Zambia, has long been a source of embarrassment for the church. But he has enjoyed a huge following in Italy and in his African homeland.
His most serious previous confrontation with Catholic hierarchy came in 2001, when he married Marie Sung, a Korean acupuncturist who belonged to the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. They married in a mass wedding officiated by Moon in New York.
The Catholic world was shocked. Vatican officials at the time threatened to excommunicate him but were reluctant to do so, given his popularity. In the end, a personal plea from Pope John Paul II persuaded Milingo to renounce his marriage and return to the church.
As far back as his days as a bishop in the Zambian capital of Lusaka, in the 1970s, Milingo conducted raucous healing Masses and public exorcisms that made church officials uncomfortable. Some suggested they bordered on voodooism, and he was ordered to desist. Milingo ignored the orders and defended the Masses as popular rituals that incorporated local cultural customs.
In 1983, the Vatican pulled him out of Zambia and ordered him to Rome. He continued his exotic ministry in monthly sessions in a church in suburban Rome, and later in warehouses and stadiums across Italy.
Milingo dropped out of sight early this summer, reappearing in July in Washington, where he held a news conference lambasting the Vatican for continuing its ban on married priests. Rumors began to circulate that he had reunited with his wife.