Vatican excommunicates Zambia archbishop

[stu]

By FRANCES D'EMILIO, Associated Press Writer

Tue Sep 26, 4:37 PM ET

 

 

 

VATICAN CITY - Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, the charismatic Zambian prelate who defied the Holy See by getting married in 2001, has been excommunicated after installing four married men as bishops, the Vatican said Tuesday.

 

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Although Vatican authorities, including the late Pope John Paul II, had tried for years to coax Milingo into mending his ways, Rome lost patience with him over the unauthorized ordinations, which threaten papal authority.

 

The Vatican said the 76-year-old prelate was "automatically excommunicated" under church law for the ordinations Sunday at a church in Washington, D.C.

 

Milingo finds himself in "progressive, open break with communion with the Church," the Vatican said in a statement.

 

The four men, who claim affiliation with the breakaway Synod of Old Catholic Churches, also were automatically excommunicated for being ordained, the Vatican said.

 

The Vatican, accusing Milingo of "sowing division and disarray among the faithful," said it had tried to convince him not to go through with the ordinations.

 

Milingo's spokesman in Washington did not return a phone call seeking comment.

 

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 of the Unification Church, in a group wedding ceremony in New York.

 

After John Paul made a personal appeal a few months later, Milingo renounced that union. But last summer, the prelate surfaced in the United States and said he was living with his wife in the Washington area.

 

He had a strong following in a church near Rome because of his reputation as an exorcist and healer. Catholic officials accused him of promoting African indigenous beliefs by performing mass exorcisms and healing ceremonies.

 

The Vatican also said that Milingo violated church law when he created an association of married priests and when he celebrated Mass with married clergy.

 

The defiant ordination of the men appeared to be the last straw for Rome.

 

Milingo ordained the Rev. George Augustus Stallings, Jr., of Washington, Peter Paul Brennan, of New York, Patrick Trujillo, of Newark, N.J., and Joseph Gouthro, of Las Vegas, Sunday at a Capital Hill Church.

 

Prelates "at various levels of the church tried in vain to contact Archbishop Milingo, to dissuade him from going ahead with scandal-provoking actions, above all among the faithful who followed his pastoral ministry in favor of the poor and sick," the Vatican said.

 

Considering that the pope had, "even recently, shown him understanding, the Holy See waited with vigilant patience to watch the evolution of the events which, unfortunately, led Archbishop Milingo to be in a condition of irregularity and of progressive, open break with communion with the Church, first by being married and then with the ordination of four bishops," it said.

 

An analyst of the Vatican's moves, the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Washington-based Jesuit, said he believed the Vatican was afraid that Milingo's actions could "create a schism" that could continue for a long time as renegade bishops ordained new ones.

 

"They always kept reaching out to him, trying to bring him back, but once he ordained another bishop" without Rome's approval, "that puts it into a whole new ball game," Reese said in a telephone interview from the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.

 

Stallings said by telephone from Washington that Vatican officials had "badgered" the Zambian prelate by telling him he would risk "going to hell" if he went ahead with the ordinations.

 

Stallings was excommunicated in 1990 when he announced he was forming the breakaway African American Catholic Congregation.

 

"They excommunicated me then, and I rose from the dead, I guess, and came back to haunt them," Stallings said, also contending that Milingo was a threat because the Vatican knew "he could ordain other priests, other bishops."

 

Under Vatican teaching, the authority to name bishops rests with the pope. The church also requires celibacy of its priests ordained under the Latin rite.

 

The Vatican said it did not recognize the ordination of the four, and warned that it would not recognize any ordinations done by these men in the future.

 

Reese drew parallels to the 1988 excommunication of French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, after he consecrated four bishops without Rome's consent.