MILINGO-FUTURE May-29-2001 (1,040 words) With photo. xxxi
Newly married archbishop says he'll work full time with Rev. Moon
By Tracy Early
Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) -- Zambian Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, married in a 60-couple wedding May 27 in New York, said he would be working on a full-time basis with the organization run by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

In a Catholic News Service interview May 29, the archbishop said he hoped to work in Africa but could not say where ``till Rev. Moon and his organization give us a job description.''

He said, however, that he did not plan to leave the Catholic Church, and he continues to regard Pope John Paul II as the successor of St. Peter and vicar of Christ.

``Every day I say a rosary for the Holy Father, and I will continue that,'' he said. ``Every document that comes from the pope I will take very seriously.''

But while recognizing his continuing obligation as a bishop to obey the pope, he said he could not give up the ``mandate from God'' to conduct the healing and exorcism services that brought opposition from church officials.

He said he would continue conducting those services in addition to carrying out whatever duties Rev. Moon gave him.

Asked if he was concerned about the possibility of excommunication, Archbishop Milingo said ``excommunication'' was ``an old term'' and ``does not mean anything at all.''

``How can you put out of the church someone who believes in the church?'' he asked.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said Archbishop Milingo had placed himself outside the church by participating in the wedding and that formal canonical penalties would be announced against him.

Navarro-Valls said Archbishop Milingo would be personally informed of the church penalties against him before they are made public. The archbishop holds no church office at present, but he was expected to be suspended from the active priestly ministry.

Church law says that an apostate -- one who abandons the faith -- incurs automatic excommunication. However, determining apostasy can be a complicated matter, especially if the person involved still proclaims himself a member of the church.

Archbishop Milingo, who will be 71 June 13, was interviewed at offices of Rev. Moon's organization in New York two days after he was married to Maria Sung, a 43-year-old acupuncturist from Korea, in a ceremony with Rev. and Mrs. Moon officiating.

Sung was present for the interview but did not speak. Archbishop Milingo said she knew a little English and a little Italian, and they communicated ``as far as we can.'' He said he hoped she would learn more English and he could learn some Korean.

He said he hoped to have children, and she had told him she thought it would be possible. But he said they were following the pattern Rev. Moon established of living together ``as brother and sister'' for a 40-day purification period before consummating the marriage.

He said that although she belonged to Rev. Moon's Unification Church, he found ``her belief in Jesus is such (that) one could rightly put that (membership in the Unification Church) aside.'' He began giving her Communion at the Mass he celebrated earlier that day, he said.

(Although people speak in general terms of the Unification Church, and followers of Rev. Moon meet in local ``family churches,'' Rev. Moon did not identify his original organization as a church but as the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity. When he dissolved that organization in 1997, he replaced it with the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.)

Archbishop Milingo appeared at the interview in a black suit and said Rev. Moon was providing that and everything else he needed because he had left everything at the apartment he was occupying at the Vatican.

He said he had spoken by phone with a lawyer about disposal of property at the Italian village of Zagarolo that a benefactor had given for use of his Emmanuel Foundation and the congregations he established, he said.

Archbishop Milingo said he would continue to call himself an archbishop, but ``I don't think I will wear the clothes of the clergy because I don't want to offend some scrupulous Catholics.''

Catholics who have been supporting his work and now feel hurt by his actions should not look on him as ``the cause of their suffering,'' but find suffering in the fact that ``the mandate I received from God has been blocked and impeded continuously,'' Archbishop Milingo said.

``The Catholic Church should be honest enough to see that the cause is not Archbishop Milingo, but the fact that they have not accepted what I received from God,'' he said.

The archbishop said that when he first went to Italy, sometimes 50-60 priests would join with him as concelebrants at his Masses. But bishops and superiors of religious orders warned them to stop collaborating with him and ``punished'' them in various ways if they continued, he said.

Archbishop Milingo said that when he was forbidden to use churches, he began holding services in hotels and warehouses.

He indicated that the final showdown began in March when a top official of the Congregation for Bishops told him in a telephone conversation that he should no longer celebrate Masses in warehouses.

Archbishop Milingo said some priests told him that the official would be willing to take him to one of his regular Saturday meetings with the pope.

But the archbishop said he wanted a chance to explain his situation to the pope, and the congregation head would only have taken him along as a ``spanner boy'' -- an assistant who carries tools for a mechanic.

``I have never heard anything directly from the pope against me,'' Archbishop Milingo said.

Archbishop Milingo said the Rev. and Mrs. Geun-Sik Song, missionaries for Rev. Moon's organization in Rome, heard about him and contacted him three years ago.

They introduced him to Rev. Moon, who subsequently invited him to participate in some events, including meetings in Washington and Korea, Archbishop Milingo said.

Then, this year, with his work blocked and people referring to him derisively as an African ``witch doctor'' engaged in superstition, Rev. Moon ``offered me a chance.''

END

Copyright (c) 2001 Catholic News Service/U.S. Catholic Conference. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service.