Our Sunday Visitor

The 'miracles' of Milingo

Thousands say this Zambian archbishop is a great faith healer and exorcist. Others call him a witch doctor. Who is this man, Emmanuel Milingo?

By Peter McDonnell

Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo draws crowds like no other bishop living in Italy, yet none of his writings are carried at the Libreria Vaticana, the bookstore in St. Peter's Square. "He's a bit problematic," explains a woman at the counter.

Indeed, Archbishop Milingo is no ordinary archbishop. The 65-year-old Zambian was removed from his post as head of the Archdiocese of Lusaka in 1983 on account of his controversial healing ministry. He had been made a bishop in 1969 and four years later discovered what he calls his gift: healing the sick and casting out demons.

Shortly after he made his discovery, Vatican officials made their investigation of the young archbishop, who was rapidly gaining fame in Zambia. While he was becoming a popular figure among ordinary Zambians, his fellow bishops were critical of him -- and perhaps envious as well. Archbishop Milingo was drawing the crowds.

And he still does. Although he has lived in Rome for the last 14 years, he travels up and down the Italian peninsula holding his prayer meetings and healing masses. Some Italian bishops, including those in the Lazio region surrounding Rome, have prohibited him from holding public Masses in their dioceses. And he respects that.

In typical Italian -- and Vatican -- fashion, though, there are exceptions to the prohibition, and occasionally Archbishop Milingo will say a public Mass in Rome. He is also obliged to inform the Vatican's Secretariat of State about his travels, so as not to cause problems with local bishops. He has been to the United States and Canada, and has a solid following in Spain.

"Milingo is very hard to define," the archbishop told Our Sunday Visitor recently, referring to himself in the third person. "For a long time some people have called him a witch. They've concluded that he has a strange coating of Christianity, but at the bottom its really pagan. So when he says he's praying in the name of God, he's just making incantations to animism, to his ancestors and so on. This, unfortunately, has been the conviction of even the high levels of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church."

Others, including some cardinals, consider him a healer. "But they don't mean healer in the sense of the Gospel; they mean medicine man," Archbishop Milingo said. "They exclude him from being a healer according to the Gospel."

If Archbishop Milingo is now, as he calls himself, an African missionary in Europe, it didn't happen by choice. He was yanked out of his seat in Lusaka following complaints by his fellow bishops and the papal nuncio, or representative of the Holy See.

Criticism ranged from the relatively mild charge that he was neglecting the administration of the archdiocese (one look at his desk -- cluttered with letters, holy cards and statues of the Madonna -- is enough to show he's not much of a manager) to the more serious allegations that his controversial Masses and healing services were going far beyond Catholic bounds.

Called to Rome

After being called to Rome from Lusaka in 1982, Archbishop Milingo was virtually under house arrest until finally meeting with Pope John Paul II 14 months later. In the meantime, he was called before a commission set up by the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the Church's mission agency, and retains bitter memories of the four sessions.

"I wouldn't want to wash the dirty linen in public, but I had no defense, and I could not call in anyone to defend me," he detailed. "I was alone, always alone. There was nothing appreciative said on my part, nothing appreciative about what I had done during 13 years as archbishop of Lusaka. Noth-ing."

With that having been the tone of the Vatican's investigation, Archbishop Milingo was apprehensive about his meeting with the Pope. He recalls the Pope greeting him warmly, but telling him bluntly that he would not be going back to Africa.

"It was clear that I was still in the Church, but that my place of work would change," Archbishop Milingo said. He added that Pope John Paul told him, "You will stay here, and we shall safeguard your gift."

The archbishop recalls Pope John Paul telling him affectionately that he shouldn't be surprised if he was treated roughly in Rome. "The Church has to act this way," the Pope reportedly told him, adding that the hierarchy had been just as brutal with Father Padre Pio, a Capuchin monk from southern Italy who supposedly bore the stigmata -- the marks of the wounds inflicted on Christ during His crucifixion -- and was renowned for working miracles.

Archbishop Milingo was given a small apartment in a building owned by the Vatican and a job as a special delegate at the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples, the Church agency that coordinates pastoral care for refugees, immigrants and Gypsies.

In exile

The African bishop is essentially in exile. Archbishop Milingo saw Pope John Paul again in 1989, and claims he has never heard a word of discouragement or reproach from him. And yet, one can see that the archbishop is treated a bit like the daffy aunt, still part of the family, but not the one put out on display as the model member.

There were rumors after he met the Pope in 1989 that he might be given a chapel or church of his own in Rome -- and there are plenty available -- but that didn't happen. So while his controversial mission has not been stopped by the Vatican, it has not been promoted, either. And he is not surprised that he runs into trouble with some of the Italian bishops.

"Just because something is good, is for the welfare of the Lord, doesn't mean it won't meet opposition," he said calmly. "I don't think that any divine mission can just go smoothly. It doesn't work."

While faith healing and exorcisms may give a lot of people -- and a lot of Catholics, including bishops -- the jitters, Archbishop Milingo's defense is basically airtight: Christ's mandate to the apostles to do just that (see Mt 10:8). Priests and bishops are given very clear authority by Christ himself to preach the Gospel, cast out devils and heal the sick, Archbishop Milingo claims: "With these three we are able to complete our mission and our apostolate."

Archbishop Milingo says there's no black magic, no strange African incantations at his services, just lots of faith in God: "What people experience at our prayer meetings is the presence of God."

The alleged wonders that the archbishop performs shouldn't be so extraordinary, he said. They would be more commonplace if more priests and bishops used the power given them.

"I don't want to be put on a pedestal," he said. "I lead a simple life. But when it comes to prayer, I'm actually calling on the name of Jesus. When I pray, I pray with such confidence that I'm sure the Lord is with me."

In action

Once a month, Archbishop Milingo travels to the tiny town of Zocco, halfway between Brescia and Bergamo in northern Italy. He holds a couple hours of catechesis on Saturday morning, and then a healing Mass in the afternoon. He repeats the same on Sunday, always in a cinder-block warehouse in the town's industrial park.

By the time Mass begins on Sunday afternoon, hundreds of cars and several buses have appeared from all over northern Italy. About 1,000 people are in attendance, including 73-year-old Magdalena Marton, who got on a bus in Pordenone at 6 a.m. in order to arrive by 11 a.m. Some 200 people came from the small northern town on four buses.

Hours are all approximate. A Mass planned for 3:30 p.m. begins at 5:30 p.m. But people wait patiently, many of them praying the Rosary for the third or fourth time that day. Lots of people have rosaries draped around their necks, others have them wrapped around their wrists.

Mass begins with the archbishop walking through the aisles, sprinkling holy water left and right. No sooner does he walk up the right aisle than three women in that area immediately go into convulsions. It takes four men to hold down one, three another and two the third.

"Some of these people are disturbed and some of them are possessed," explained a heavyset man who holds people down when they begin to shake. "It's not a big deal."

It is if you're not used to it. In fact, it's absolutely frightening. There are a lot of weird shrieks, some cursing, some vomiting. And lots of uncontrollable shaking. One man in a gray T-shirt stands on one leg, the other leg twitching furiously.

A woman of about 40, in the front row of the center aisle, does a high-speed and violent version of the jitterbug, all limbs moving simultaneously. A male companion holds her around the waist, but when she gets too wild help arrives, and they bring out a mat and put her down on the floor. After a few minutes of screaming and shaking, she calms down.

Loradana M., a 42-year-old nurse from Milan, has seen psychiatrists, exorcists and magicians. She claims the psychiatrists almost killed her, the magicians took her money and the exorcists put her on the right path.

"I come here because I need it," said Loredana. "I've traveled around to a lot of different priests, but this one is different."

There was only one nun and a couple of priests in the crowd of about 1,000. The nun, Sister Andreina, of Bergamo, has been following Archbishop Milingo since he started traveling around the country. "I've seen the suffering he's been through, and I saw his great sanctity in the reaction to his critics," she said. "He has always responded with a lot of love."

Sister Andreina sees nothing out of the ordinary in what the archbishop does, and thinks more priests and bishops should be doing the same things: "All he wants to do is preach the Gospel, and the fruits of that are the healings."

But Sister Andreina admits that it takes some faith to accept the African archbishop, and that a little knowledge of asceticism and mysticism are useful, too. "If you don't believe in the supernatural, you won't accept Milingo," she said.

One of Sister Andreina's friends, an elderly woman named Giuseppina, complains that Archbishop Milingo has been terribly maligned on account of his powers.

"So many people say he's a witch," noted Giuseppina, who came early on Sunday to get a front-row seat. "I say he's a man of faith."

McDonnell writes from Rome

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