THE CONTROVERSIAL Zambian archbishop Emmanuel Milingo last week announced an "independent charismatic ministry" to reconcile illicitly married priests with the Church. Speaking in Washington after vanishing from his Rome residence in late June, Archbishop Milingo proclaimed "the end of mandatory celibacy".

The Vatican publicly "deplored" the bishop's actions. Nevertheless, the archbishop made clear his intent to be reunited with the Korean acupuncturist, Maria Sung, whom he married in 2001 in a New York ceremony of the Revd Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. He reconciled with the Holy See shortly after a "public canonical admonition" from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith threatened him with excommunication. 

After his disappearance from Rome, the Zambian Government instituted a search for its "important and respected citizen", before the archbishop resurfaced in the American capital, calling for married ex-priests to "unleash your burden of humiliation, exclusivity, and shame".

"The Church has nothing to lose by allowing priests the option to marry," Archbishop Milingo said at the press conference. "Historically, out of holy marriages have come priests, popes, saints and loving servants of God and the Church."

Archbishop Milingo is staying in America as the guest of the African American Catholic Congregation (AACC), which broke communion with Rome in 1989. Archbishop George Stallings, an excommunicated priest who heads the AACC, was married in the same Unification Church ceremony at which Archbishop Milingo and Ms Sung publicised their union.

Last week, Archbishop Stallings told The Tablet that Archbishop Milingo intended to embark on a six-month speaking tour of the United States, and confirmed the latter's intent to reunite with Ms Sung, whom "he has always considered his wife".