The Vatican this week announced the excommunication of Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo after he ordained four married men as bishops in an unsanctioned Washington ceremony. The penalty, imposed automatically on all the participants by the Code of Canon Law - and the implication that the Church would view the event not only as illicit, but invalid - capped years of tension between the Zambian prelate and the Holy See.

 In a rite kept unpublicised until after the fact, Archbishop Milingo ordained as bishops the four clerics affiliated with the breakaway Old Catholic Church at the US capital's Imani Temple, home of the African-American Catholic Congregation (AACC) and its head, Archbishop George A. Stallings, a former priest of the Archdiocese of Washington who was among the ordained. While several of the ordinands had claimed valid episcopal orders through other channels, Archbishop Stallings announced afterwards that the four "are not only validly ordained Catholic bishops, but we are [now] ordained Roman Catholic bishops".

Archbishop Milingo, 76, was ordained Archbishop of Lusaka by Pope Paul VI in 1969. In 1983, he was given a nominal post at the Vatican amid his first spate of controversies, then involving his charismatic healing ministry, which he continued in Italy. In 2001, the archbishop disappeared from his Roman residence and resurfaced in New York where, at a mass-wedding ceremony of the clandestine Unification Church, he married Maria Sung, a bride chosen for him by Revd Sun Myung Moon, head of the controversial sect.

Five years after leaving Ms Sung to reconcile with his superiors, Archbishop Milingo vanished again in late June. Returning to public life in Washington three weeks later, he announced his intention of returning to married life with Ms Sung.

Earlier this month, the archbishop made his first public appearance with his wife at a conference for married clerics as the Holy See mandated that he return and repent to the Pope by 15 October, barring which a "canonical suspension" would be imposed.  Having incurred an automatic excommunication the threat of sanctions is now redundant.