30 September 2006
Nairobi — Archibishop Milingo was this week excommunicated from the Catholic Church, Dann Okoth writes about a man who has had many battles with Vatican
He jolted the Catholic Church by his controversial miracle healing ministry, then he was recalled to the Vatican in 1983, presumably to quell his non-conformist tendency.
Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, installs four married men as bishops during a ceremony in Washington last Sunday.
But Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo wasn't finished yet. He shocked the Roman Catholic Church in 2001 when he publicly called for an end to mandatory celibacy, a development that was punctuated by his very public marriage to a Doctor of Acupuncture from Korea.
The move was rejected by the Catholic Church as it was viewed as an embarrassment. At Pope John Paul II's intervention, he set aside his marriage and returned to his healing ministry in Zagarolo, outside of Rome.
However, his disappearance and return, seclusion and subsequent restriction left many questions unanswered.
Milingo appeared on Italian TV and radio shows, and conducted healing masses throughout Europe, which attracted thousands upon thousands of people. He also performed exorcism. This did not sit well with some bishops in Rome. Although the church recognises exorcism, Milingo was accused of incorporating indigenous African practices into mass and practiced mass exorcism. The more his ministry grew, the more his freedom to celebrate mass was restricted.
After five more years of constant observation and restrictive supervision, he has again emerged to awaken the conscience of the church he loves. He installed four married men as bishops in Washington, in a breakaway Catholic sect prompting the church to excommunicate him.
On Tuesday, the Vatican announced that it had excommunicated Archbishop Milingo, 76, for an offence that the Catholic Church takes seriously.
According to the New York Times the Catholic Church says it had watched over Archbishop Milingo's case with "vigilant patience" adding that he had conducted himself with "irregularity and progressively open rupture with the communion of the Church."
However, the ever-defiant Archbishop on Thursday rejected the Vatican's expulsion and said he would continue his campaign to force the Church to accept married priests.
Apparently, Milingo's troubles, which culminated in his excommunication on Tuesday, traces their roots to his association with Maria Sung, whom he married in a mass wedding to the detriment of the Catholic Church.
After renouncing the marriage, he returned to Zambia briefly after complaining of kidnapping threats in Italy.
However recently, he went to the United States, where he reunited with his wife, then appeared at a news conference in Washington in July for the formation of a new sect, Married Priests Now. Vatican accused Milingo of forming the sect to rival Roman Catholic in Africa.
However in an interview with National Catholic Reporter, a publication concerning itself mainly with Catholic Church issues, Milingo denied that he intended to launch a sect in Africa funded by Rev Sun Myung Moon as a rival to Roman Catholisms, charging that his latest break with Vatican is the result of "intolerable restrictions" imposed over him in the last five years as well as deep "lack of appreciation" for his spiritual gifts as an exorcist.
Milingo is quoted in the report saying he wants to reconcile married priest with the Catholic Church as well as promote better understanding between Catholicism and Moon's Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.
Milingo says "Married Priests Now" will agitate for the return of nearly 150,000 married priests who have left the church in recent decades.
Milingo and Sung during the group marriage ceremony celebrated by Rev Sun Myung Moon on May 27, 2001, at a New York hotel.
At the Washington press conference, Milingo was seen at the side of Archbishop George Stallings, leader of his own breakaway group, the African American Catholic Congregation as well as followers of Moon.
At the function, Milingo discounted fears, frequently voiced in Rome, that if he were to fall back under the spell of Moon, the charismatic Zambian prelate might lead a breakaway congregation in Africa offering a married priesthood and drawing on traditional African religious practices, especially healing and the casting out of demons. Such a development, some Vatican officials worry, could hobble the Catholic Church on the continent where its recent growth has been the most dramatic.
"We have no ambition at all, in any way, to do anything of that kind," Milingo was quoted as saying, adding that "he was very surprised at how the Catholic Church has spread so much evil against Rev Moon" and that he would like to be an intermediary between the two religious bodies.
He claimed that Moon's vision for global peace and the family are consistent with recent papal teachings.
In a 2002 memoir titled Fished from the Mud, Milingo was quoted as hinting that Moon's people may have drugged or brainwashed him, prompting his marriage and eventual break with the Catholic Church.
However, in an interview with National Catholic Reporter, Milingo insists he never said that and it was the church authorities who insisted that he had been brainwashed.
"All my problems come from the lack of appreciation by the Catholic authorities for the spiritual gifts I have," he says.
He adds: "It was too much for them to believe that in the modern world, I can simply say 'let this happen' and it happens," he says.
Among the examples of Milingo's alleged spiritual prowess, include a recent phone call from a woman in Modena, Italy, who complained that 20 days after the birth of her child she could not produce breast milk. Milingo says he instructed her to draw a glass of water, which he blessed over the phone. He then instructed the mother to drink it, and immediately afterwards she began to lactate.
"They can't believe such things are possible," he says with respect to Vatican officials and bishops who were reluctant to have him in their diocese.
But Milingo's predicament could have stemmed from a simmering worldwide crisis in the Catholic Church especially as regards the issue of priestly celibacy.
Just recently in Kenya, the Catholic Church was stunned when one of its priests defied the celibacy rule and wedded his long time fiancÈe.
Father Geoffrey Shiundu of Tartar Parish was consequently suspended by Kitale Catholic Diocese Bishop Maurice Henry Crowley for marrying Stella Nangilla.
He was later threatened with excommunication by the same diocese before he formally joined the Reformed Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church (RRC&AC).
Father Shiundu later on claimed 26 priests from the mainstream Catholic Church had crossed over to his RRC&AC.
Shiundu's move may also have emphasised the long held fear that many in the Catholic priesthood are not for celibacy and that the practice was being forced down their throat -many more, it is feared, could be preaching water and drinking wine.
Shiundu admitted: "I did not have the gift of celibacy in my priesthood and that is the case with some other priests who are still in the Catholic church."
Indeed, currently the Catholic Church is divided on the issue of priestly celibacy with the more radical and conservative members of the church arguing that there should be no compromise on the issue of priestly celibacy.
Poignantly Milingo's excommunication and apparent subsequent leanage towards Moon's organisation could act as a catalyst for priests who are burdened by celibacy but who have been reluctant to come out in the open to voice their dissatisfaction.
A source at the Catholic Church in Nairobi told The Saturday Standard that Milingo's experience should serve as a lesson to the church and a reawakening that it must embrace change.
"I think losing prominent church members like Milingo ought to serve as a lesson to our church leaders that we ought to listen to dissenting views and, maybe accommodate these views," says the source who declined to be named, for fear of victimisation.
"These beliefs and practices were not cast in stone and if change demands that we relax them to be as accommodative and responsive as possible then why not? Because we cannot continue to lose our members in this way," he adds.
Interestingly, Milingo was once considered as the rising star of the Catholic Church in Africa and his exit would big a big blow for the continent.
Milingo was born in a poor farm village in Zambia in 1930. He was educated at St Mary's Presbyterial school in Chipata and attended the Kasina and Kachebere Seminaries. He was ordained in 1958, and served as parish priest in Chipata from 1963 to 1966, when he founded the Zambia Helpers Society. He was the secretary of Mass Media at the Zambia Episcopal Conference from 1966 to 1969, when he founded the first of three orders, the Daughters of the Redeemer. In 1969, Pope Paul VI consecrated him as the Bishop of the archdioceses of Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, as one of Africa's youngest bishops where he served for 14 years.
About himself, Archbishop Milingo says, "I don't want to be put on a pedestal. I lead a simple life. But when it comes to prayer, I'm actually calling on the name of Jesus. When I pray, I pray with such confidence that I'm sure the Lord is with me."
He is a gifted singer, as well as the author of several books, including The Flower Garden of Jesus the Redeemer, Precautions in the Ministry of Deliverance, Against Satan, The World in Between: Christian Healing and the Struggle for Spiritual Survival. He has had many books written about him, and has produced his own CD.
Archbishop Milingo's motto is: "I will apply myself for God and my next of kin".
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