Married archbishop: Church isn't fair

June 13, 2001

BY DAVE NEWBART STAFF REPORTER

Chicago Sun-Times

The defiant Zambian Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo said Tuesday he was simply following the Bible's message of promoting love and family when he was married by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon in a public slap at the church's mandate that priests practice celibacy.

Speaking before a conference of clergy in Chicago that was heavily attended by followers of Moon's Unification Church, Milingo said he should not be thrown out of the Roman Catholic Church, as the Vatican indicated it plans to do.

"You don't excommunicate someone who believes," he said. "I've never preached anything against the doctrine."

Told that a married Lutheran minister in Joliet last week was granted special permission from the pope to become a Catholic priest, he responded, "They are not playing fair."

Milingo said he trusted Moon to choose his bride and perform the wedding--a mass ceremony in New York City last month that included 59 other couples--because of the Unification Church's strong emphasis on family. He said other clergy who have quit first and gotten married have been shunned by the Catholic power structure anyway.

Another Catholic priest at the conference said he didn't support Milingo's decision to marry, but he does think celibacy should be optional.

"Most priests have the same opinion," said Monsignor Edward Bikuma, pastor at St. Ephrem on Chicago's North Side, part of the Eastern Rite branch of Catholicism.

Milingo was forced to retire from his post in Africa in 1983 after promoting faith healings and exorcisms. He has kept his title while living in Rome.