This year’s edition of the Annuario Pontificio, the official Vatican yearbook, does not include the name of Emmanuel Milingo, the Zambian archbishop who was excommunicated last year.The Vatican formally announced Milingo’s excommunication in September 2006, after the troubled African prelate ordained four married men as bishops.
A September 26 announcement from the Vatican press office noted that by ordaining bishops without the approval of the Holy See, Archbishop Milingo had incurred the automatic penalty of excommunication.
After being named the first Archbishop of Lusaka, Zambia, in 1969, Milingo resigned that post in 1983 at the request of the Vatican, after numerous complaints about his unorthodox behavior.
Since his resignation he had been listed in the Annuario simply as the Archbishop Emeritus of Lusaka. The African prelate had never been given another pastoral assignment.
In 2001 the archbishop traveled to New York, where he participated in a mass wedding ceremony organized by the cult of Sun Myung Moon. Later that year he returned to Rome, met with Pope John Paul II, acknowledged that his marriage to Maria Sung was invalid, and was restored to regular status in the Catholic Church-- although he now lived under the watchful eye of Vatican officials.
In June 2006, however, Archbishop Milingo disappeared from his residence outside Rome. He appeared in Washington in July, joining with George Stallings-- a suspended priest of the Washington archdiocese, who now leads his own sect from a church near Capitol Hill-- at a press conference calling for the Catholic Church to end priestly celibacy.
Since leaving Italy last year, the African prelate has rekindled his relationship with Sun Myung Moon, and was recently reported to be in Korea, studying the peculiar theology of the cult leader.
The Annuario Pontificio lists all of the bishops of the Catholic Church. Having broken his ties with the Church, Milingo no longer qualified for inclusion in the latest edition.
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, presented the first copy of this year’s Annuario to Pope Benedict XVI on February 12.
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