Catholic World News News Feature
Archbishop Milingo surfaces in Washington with new cult July 12, 2006
Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, the unpredictable Zambian prelate who attempted to marry a Korean woman in a Unification Church ceremony in 2001, appeared in Washington, DC, on July 12 to join in another renegade cleric's campaign for a married priesthood.
The troubled African archbishop, who had been missing from his home outside Rome for nearly a month, surfaced in Washington alongside the George Stallings, a former priest of the Washington archdiocese who now styles himself the archbishop of the "African American Catholic Congregation."
Speaking at the National Press Club, Archbishop Milingo said: "There is no more important healing than the reconciliation of 150,000 married priests with the Mother Church." Stallings, who organized the public event, said that the African prelate was "acting out of deep love for the Church."
Archbishop Milingo, a 76-year-old who has not held a pastoral assignment since 1983, had been living quietly outside Rome for months before his disappearance in June. He left his residence shortly after an announcement that he would perform at an Italian soul-music festival in July.
The African prelate, who was appointed in 1969 as the first bishop of the Lusaka, Zambia diocese, has a history of instability. His flamboyant "healing services" in the 1970s and early 1980s earned him wide notoriety in Zambia, but also provoked complaints that he was acting as a "witch doctor." Eventually those complaints convinced Vatican officials that Archbishop Milingo should be replaced, and in 1982 he was summoned to Rome and eventually pressured to resign as Archbishop of Lusaka.
Living in Italy without a permanent assignment, the archbishop resumed his unorthodox preaching and healing services, and performed in public as a dancer and singer. In 1996, complaints from Italian bishops led to a new disciplinary caution from the Vatican.
Archbishop Milingo's most spectacular departure from orthodoxy came in 2001, when he announced his adherence to the Unification Church, led by the self-proclaimed Korean messiah, Sun Myung Moon. In a mass wedding ceremony in New York, he took a Korean bride, chosen for him by Rev. Moon. In August of the same year a repentant Archbishop Milingo returned to Rome for a personal meeting with Pope John Paul II, renounced his attempted marriage, reaffirmed his Catholic faith, and disappeared for a year of reflection and prayer.
"Archbishop" Stallings, who joined Milingo at the July 12 press event in Washington, also participated in that May 2001 wedding ceremony in New York. He remains married to the woman chosen for him by Rev. Moon, with whom he has two children.
Stallings broke with the Washington archdiocese in 1989, after he was accused of conducting an affair with an altar boy. He later set up his own religious congregation-- first calling the Imani Temple, and later the African American Catholic Congregation-- which offers an eccentric combination of African-American music and dancing with traditional Catholic liturgical gestures.
