Excommunication threatened for married archbishop - Emmanuel Milingo - Brief Article

National Catholic Reporter, July 27, 2001 by Gill Donovan

VATICAN: Zambian Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo will be excommunicated Aug. 20 unless he leaves the woman he married, leaves the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's sect and publicly declares his obedience to the pope, the Vatican's doctrinal congregation said.

In a statement released July 17, the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said it was acting "by mandate" of Pope John Paul II.

Milingo, the 71-year-old former archbishop of Lusaka and former official in the Vatican office for migrants and refugees, was married to a Korean woman in late May during a service conducted by Moon in New York.

The Vatican notification, signed July 16 by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the doctrinal congregation, said it had been impossible to communicate with Milingo "in order to invite him to reflect on the grave consequences of his conduct and actions, to make amends for the scandal given and to reform."

A spokesman for Moon's organization said July 17 that Milingo had written to Pope John Paul, asking to be released from his vow of celibacy and to have his marriage blessed in the Catholic church. The spokesman, Phillip Schanker, said no one from the Vatican had responded to the archbishop's letter.

Vatican officials said the letter arrived, but every attempt to communicate personally with Milingo failed. Schanker and other members of Moon's staff always insisted on being intermediaries, they said.

Schanker said that Milingo Was in Korea "where he is visiting his wife's family and making preparations for their future life together."

Briefs gathered from news services, correspondents and staff, are compiled and edited by Gill Donovan.