An excommunicated Roman Catholic archbishop continued his defiance of the Vatican on Sunday when he ordained two married men as priests.
A renegade Roman Catholic archbishop who was excommunicated by the Vatican after he installed married priests as bishops acknowledged Saturday that South Korean evangelist Rev. Sun Myung Moon is supporting his crusade against mandatory celibacy.
Some groups that support the end of mandatory celibacy for Roman Catholic priests reject Married Priests Now, the organization formed by Emmanuel Milingo, due to ties to the Unification Church.
A Roman Catholic Archbishop from Zambia with a colorful history of rousing the Vatican and ties to the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, will once again annoy his bosses this Sunday when he ordains three married men as priests at a church in West New York.
A Roman Catholic archbishop from Africa, excommunicated for installing four married clergy as bishops, said Tuesday he will ordain more married clerics in his crusade against celibacy despite the Vatican’s opposition.
It would seem that Roman Catholics challenging the ban on married priests have found a leader in former Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo. He’s defiantly appeared with his bride from a 2001 Unification Church wedding at which hundreds of couples tied the knot. He stood his ground last month after being excommunicated for installing four married men as bishops. But the 76-year-old prelate from Zambia finds himself more shunned than celebrated, even by his ideological allies.
A Roman Catholic archbishop dismissed from the Church on Tuesday for consecrating four married men as bishops said yesterday that he does not accept his excommunication and will work to have the Vatican lift its requirement that priests be celibate. “We do not accept this excommunication and lovingly return it to His Holiness, our beloved Pope Benedict XVI, to . . . withdraw it and join us in recalling married priests to service once again,” Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo said in a written statement read for him at a news conference at Imani Temple in Northeast Washington.
At a time when the Roman Catholic church, like other traditional Christian denominations, needs all the believers it can get, the Vatican does not turn lightly to excommunication. Yet earlier this week Pope Benedict decided the time had come to throw bell, book and candle at one of the most trying members of his flock – not just any rebel Catholic, but an archbishop, no less. Emmanuel Milingo, once the archbishop of Lusaka in Zambia, has been in and out of trouble for more than 20 years now.
Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, the Zambian prelate who angered the Vatican by getting married in 2001, has been excommunicated for again defying the Holy See by installing four married men as bishops, the Vatican said Tuesday.
An African archbishop who wants to make celibacy optional for priests installed four married men Sunday as Roman Catholic bishops. Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo – whose marriage to a woman chosen by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon scandalized the Roman Catholic Church – performed the ceremonies at a Capitol Hill church.