Milingo, a controversial faith healer and exorcist, was speaking in a newspaper interview on Saturday, a day after he announced he was returning to the Roman Catholic Church and loved his wife only as a sister.

"For 30 years I have always worked with the sick and the needy amid many difficulties. At times I have been described as a wizard and a superstitious man. I felt alone," the Zambian prelate told Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

"Then, I was slowly approached by (Moon's) Unification Church, which preaches true love through marriage, and I went with them.

"But then I understood I had committed a very grave mistake, I repented and I asked the Holy Father to return to the (Roman Catholic) Church," he said.

Milingo, 71, who was threatened with excommunication after he married Maria Sung at a mass wedding in May, said he would not get married if he could go back in time.

"It would not be possible to repeat those mistakes," he told the paper.

The prelate's marriage was the latest in a string of embarrassments he has caused the Vatican over what some Church authorities consider his unorthodox methods.

Milingo said on Italian television on Friday he had decided to return to the Church's fold and had been moved by Pope John Paul's call to "come back to the Catholic Church."

Sung, a 43-year-old South Korean, who has been on a hunger strike for 11 days in a bid to meet Milingo face-to-face, has said she still hoped to see Milingo alone and still believed he would not walk away from their marriage.

Earlier this month, some two months after his marriage, Milingo unexpectedly turned up in Rome to mend bridges then vanished for what the Vatican called "a period of reflection and prayer."

Unification Church members said diplomatic negotiations with the Vatican for the couple to meet had stalled because Sung insisted on a private meeting and that she would not accept a list of conditions apparently set by Milingo.

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