African Archbishop Gets Excommunicated

 

AP

African Archbishop Gets Excommunicated

Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, who defied the Vatican and married a South Korean acupuncturist in 2001, has been excommunicated for ordaining married men as priests.

VATICAN CITY (Sept. 26) - Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, the Zambian prelate who already had angered the Vatican by getting married in 2001, has been excommunicated for again defying the Holy See by installing four married men as bishops, the Vatican said Tuesday.

The Vatican said Milingo, 76, was "automatically excommunicated" under church law for the ordination of the men a few days earlier. The Archdiocese of Washington said Sunday that the installations were not valid.

Milingo is in "a condition of irregularity and of progressive, open break with communion with the Church," the Vatican said in a statement.

The four men claim affiliation with the breakaway Synod of Old Catholic Churches.

In its announcement of the excommunication, the Vatican accused Milingo of "sowing division and dismay among the faithful."

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, in a group wedding ceremony. Upon appeal from Pope John Paul II, he later renounced that union.

He gained a strong following in a church where he had been stationed near Rome because of his reputation of being an exorcist. Before his marriage, Catholic officials accused him of promoting African indigenous beliefs by performing mass exorcisms and healing ceremonies.