South Korea RC Church Warns on Milingo

“With the financial help of Moon, he is planning something”

Asia News reports on a statement by the Roman Catholic Korean Bishops’ Conference:

The former Archbishop of Lusaka, Emmanuel Milingo, “is a danger for South Korea’s Catholics, who must avoid him and above all not become involved in his activity, clearly condemned by the Universal Church”.

…A source in Seoul told AsiaNews: “Since he allied himself to the Unifi[cation] Church…Milingo has considered Korea as excellent hunting grounds…[H]e also married a native of Seoul, Maria Sung, who has pushed him to carry out apostolate work among Koreans. On many occasions the former archbishop has tried to contact us, but has never received an answer. Now we know that, with the financial help of Moon, he is planning something, but we don’t quite know what”.

Apparently Milingo has spent most of 2007 in South Korea. UCAN has further details:

Father Peter Pai Young-ho, secretary general of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea, told UCA News Sept. 12 that…the excommunicated archbishop fraternizes with Catholics and visits Catholic institutions as though he still holds episcopal office. “It was reported that he has shown himself in Catholic archbishop’s attire and held prayer meetings with local Catholics in several shrines in the country,” the church official reported.

“The shrine authorities, who did not recognize him, welcomed him, thinking he was a foreign archbishop visiting Korea,” Father Pai added.

Earlier this month, Milingo contacted the Times of Zambia to refute claims that he had joined the Unification Church, and to complain about the way the Roman Catholic church had suppressed his God-given healing powers (“because they considered me a mere poor black guy”):

In his correspondence with the Times via email, Archbishop Milingo says he has not become a Moonist but states that Reverend Moon referred to him as a “unique person and a gift from God to humanity.”

“It is a lie that Milingo has become a Moonist. Neither will such a fact satisfy Rev. Moon that Milingo becomes a Moonist. But if Milingo is thrown away from his cradle of faith, someone who understands who Milingo is picks him up as the Daughter of Pharaoh in Egypt saved the baby Moses thrown in the river Nile.

“Not even a wee bit of my Catholic Faith has accepted an inkling of change in my Catholic beliefs,” Archbishop Milingo said.

However, the piece ends with a possible Freudian slip:

“God loves everyone with his defects. Don’t judge,” Archbishop Milingo said.

Milingo’s statement to the Times comes several months after he gave a lecture in Korea, in which he said that:

“Looking at True Parents’ life and his current achievements I realized that this person is the messiah sent by God.”

And if his Catholic beliefs have not changed, it is rather odd that he was quoted a year ago as saying that he had travelled to Korea

“to join the many Catholics and Catholic married priests who are in the Unification movement”

So what exactly might Milingo be “planning”? Perhaps we can find a clue in his 2002 account, when he temporarily split from Moon (and Maria Sung) and returned to the Catholic Church:

…the Moonies had plans: to found a well-financed parallel Catholic Church in Africa, autonomous from Rome, with its own hierarchy headed by Milingo. “I would not have gone along with the plan,” says Milingo.

Given the amount of bizarre flip-flopping since then, that last sentence shouldn’t be taken as authoritative.

(And in related Moon news: Portfolio has a profile of Kahr Arms, a gun manufacturer run by Moon’s son, while Ed Brayton is currently exploring Moon’s activities in Michigan)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.