Bishop Is Expelled for Marrying And Performing Exorcisms
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VATICAN CITY — Emmanuel Milingo, the charismatic Zambian archbishop who defied the Holy See by getting married in 2001, has been excommunicated after installing four married men as bishops, the Vatican said yesterday.
Although Vatican authorities, including the late Pope John Paul II, had tried for years to coax Mr. Milingo into mending his ways, Rome lost patience with him over the unauthorized ordinations, which threaten papal authority. The Vatican said the 76-year-old prelate was “automatically excommunicated” under church law for the ordinations Sunday at a church in Washington, D.C.
He had a strong following in a church near Rome because of his reputation as an exorcist and healer. Catholic officials accused him of promoting African indigenous beliefs by performing mass exorcisms and healing ceremonies.
Mr. Milingo finds himself in “progressive, open break with communion with the Church,” the Vatican said in a statement.The four men, who claim affiliation with the breakaway Synod of Old Catholic Churches, also were automatically excommunicated for being ordained, the Vatican said.
The Vatican, accusing Mr. Milingo of “sowing division and disarray among the faithful,” said it had tried to convince him not to go through with the ordinations. Mr. Milingo has long had a troubled relationship with the Vatican. In 2001, he was married to a South Korean acupuncturist chosen for him by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church, in a group wedding ceremony in New York.
After John Paul made a personal appeal a few months later, Mr. Milingo renounced that union. But last summer, the prelate surfaced in America and said he was living with his wife in the Washington area.
The Vatican also said Mr. Milingo violated church law when he created an association of married priests and when he celebrated Mass with married clergy.
The defiant ordination of the men appeared to be the last straw for Rome.
Mr. Milingo ordained the Rev. George Augustus Stallings Jr. of Washington, Peter Paul Brennan, of New York, Patrick Trujillo, of Newark, N.J., and Joseph Gouthro, of Las Vegas, Sunday at a Capital Hill Church.
Prelates “at various levels of the church tried in vain to contact Archbishop Milingo, to dissuade him from going ahead with scandal-provoking actions, above all among the faithful who followed his pastoral ministry in favor of the poor and sick,” the Vatican said.
