Emmanuel Milingo

Emmanuel Milingo (born June 13, 1930) is an excommunicated former Roman Catholic archbishop from Zambia.

Born in 1930 in Mnukwa (in present-day Zambia) to Yakobe Milingo and Tomaida Lumbiwe, he was educated at St Mary's Minor Seminary in Chipata.

He attended the Kasina Seminary and Kachebere Seminary.

He was ordained in 1958; in 1969, aged 39, Milingo was consecrated by Pope Paul VI as the bishop of the Archdiocese of Lusaka.

He was ordained a priest in 1958.

He served as the parish priest in Chipata from 1963 to 1966, and founded the Zambia Helpers' Society during this time.

He was the secretary of Mass Media at the Zambia Episcopal Conference from 1966 to 1969 and founded the Daughters of the Redeemer.

Pope Paul VI consecrated him as bishop of the Archdiocese of Lusaka, the capital of Zambia.

He served there from 1969 to 1983.

In the 1970s, Milingo conducted public religious services of healing and exorcism, which attracted huge crowds.

In 1983, he stepped down from his position as Archbishop of Lusaka after criticism for exorcism and faith healing practices that were not approved by church authorities.

In 1983 Pope John Paul II transferred Milingo to Rome because of his inappropriate use of his office of exorcism and his role in causing divisions in the Lusaka Archdiocese.

He was barred from practicing as a priest and bishop in Zambia, but the Pope appointed Milingo a "special delegate" of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers.

In 1992, Milingo endorsed the book On the Eucharist, a Divine Appeal, a collection of messages said to have been given by Jesus Christ in an apparition and written from September 8, 1987, to 1991 by Sr. Anna Ali, DOJS.

These messages were a traditional call to conversion and Eucharistic devotion, as well as expressing sadness over the current state of the Catholic priesthood.

In the late 1990s, Milingo became well known in traditionalist and sedevacantist circles for a speech he gave at the Our Lady of Fatima 2000 International Conference on World Peace, organized by Canadian priest Nicholas Gruner and held November 18–23, 1996.

He said that high-ranking members of the church hierarchy were "followers of Satan" or otherwise enabled evil:

"The devil in the Catholic Church is so protected now that he is like an animal protected by the government; put on a game preserve that outlaws anyone, especially hunters, from trying to capture or kill it. The devil within the Church today is actually protected by certain Church authorities from the official devil-hunter in the Church—the exorcist. To the question, "Are there men of the [Roman] Curia who are followers of Satan?" Milingo responded, 'Certainly there are priests and bishops. I stop at this level of ecclesiastical hierarchy because I am an archbishop, higher than this I cannot go."

Although Milingo did not hold office as a diocesan bishop at the time, his name appears on the book's purported imprimatur, with the date March 17, 1992.

In 1999 and 2000 Milingo participated in mass-marriage ceremonies conducted by Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church in Japan and Korea, for which he received a severe written reprimand from Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican Secretary of State.

In 2001, when Milingo was 71, he received a marriage blessing from Sun Myung Moon, the leader of the Unification Church, despite the prohibition on marriage for ordained priests.

In May 2001, Milingo said that the Roman Catholic Church should provide priests dispensation from the obligation of celibacy and should readmit married priests to the priestly ministry.

To "set an example", at the age of 71, he and Maria Sung, a 43-year-old South Korean acupuncturist and Unificationist, married in a blessing ceremony in New York City, presided over by Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han Moon.

In July 2001, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a Public Canonical Admonition officially warning Milingo to separate from Moon and from contacts with the Unification Church.

Milingo protested the order, saying, "How can I now leave my wife? For 43 years as a celibate priest I only knew God as a male. Now, through my union with Maria, I have come to see the other side of God's heart, which is female."

In a press conference organized by the Unification Church affiliate American Church Leadership Conference, Milingo said, "Celibacy has become a façade, secret affairs and marriages, raping of nuns, illegitimate children, rampant homosexuality, pedophilia and illicit sex have riddled the priesthood. Christ is mocked, the devil laughs."

In August 2001, Milingo met with Pope John Paul II, who appealed to him: "In the name of Jesus Christ, return to the Catholic Church."

Milingo agreed to separate from Sung and went into seclusion.

Sung went on a hunger strike and appeared outside of St. Peter's Basilica to protest their separation.

Archbishop George Augustus Stallings, Jr., also an excommunicated priest, who had founded his own Imani Temple African-American Catholic Congregation and married in 2001 at the same mass event as Milingo, spoke as well.

In an interview on Italian television in 2002, Milingo said that he had spent a year in prayer and meditation in Argentina, at a Capuchin monastery.

In November 2003, he made a trip to Africa over the objections of the Catholic bishops there.

In 2004 and 2005, he kept a low profile and media accounts suggested that he was living in a monastery near Rome.

In July 2006, he established Married Priests Now!, an advocacy organization to promote the acceptance of married priests in the Roman Catholic Church.

On September 24, 2006, Milingo consecrated four men as bishops (including American George Augustus Stallings Jr.., who had established an independent denomination) without a papal mandate.

Through that act alone, Milingo had incurred a latae sententiae excommunication, which was stated by the Holy See Press Office two days later.

In late June or early July 2006, Milingo quietly left Italy and, on July 12, announced at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., his plans to "embark on an independent charismatic ministry to reconcile married priests with the Catholic Faith" as an advocate of the removal of the rule of celibacy for Latin Rite priests in the Catholic Church; the group is called Married Priests Now!.

The sponsor of the press conference was MJT Television.

On December 17, 2009, the Holy See Press Office announced that Milingo had been reduced to the lay state, making him no longer a member of the Catholic clergy.

Mlingo retired from ministry in his movement for married priests in March 2013, appointing Peter Paul Brennan to take his place.