By Philip Pullella
Vatican - Emmanuel Milingo, the archbishop who shocked Catholics by marrying in Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, says he may have been brainwashed.
Milingo, 72, was used to hearing confessions. Now he is making a confession of his own in a new pray-and-tell book called Fished out of the Mud, an advance copy of which was made available ahead of publication this week.
Milingo disappeared from the Vatican in spring 2001 to marry Maria Sung, a 43-year-old Korean woman whom Moon, the controversial South Korean-born evangelist, chose for him.
'I didn't realise what I was getting myself into' The archbishop shocked the Vatican by attending the mass wedding in a tuxedo and kissing his white-gowned wife for the cameras in a ceremony in a New York hotel.
Continues Below ↓
"Maybe I was the object of a type of brainwashing," he says in the 160-page book published by the Edizioni Paolini.
Milingo, a Zambian faith healer, wrote the book with Italian journalist Michele Zanzucchi from the pampas of Argentina, where he has been living in isolation ahead of a planned return next month to Italy, where he has a big following.
"I didn't realise what I was getting myself into. I only understood later that it (the wedding) was a way of them getting total control over me," he said.
He refuses to reveal if he consummated the marriage.
'I don't want to talk about those moments' In August 2001 Milingo and Sung came to Rome separately.
He said he wanted to rejoin the Church. She went on hunger strike, gave bedside interviews and claimed the Vatican had kidnapped her husband.
Milingo had a long history of difficult relations with some Vatican officials because of his unorthodox ways, including tent revival-style masses in hotel ballrooms and public exorcisms.
The Vatican, which never recognised the marriage, threatened Milingo with excommunication.
Continues...
|
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Digg
Delicious
Newsvine
Facebook
muti
Twitter
