Zambian vice president says Milingo has responsibility to wife

August 16, 2001 Thursday 5:02 AM Eastern Time
Agence France-Presse

LUSAKA, Aug 16 - Zambia's vice president said Zambian Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, who has been at the centre of a controversy over his marriage to a Korean woman, has a responsibility to his wife, newspapers reported Thursday.

Milingo renounced his two-and-a-half month old marriage to Maria Sung in a letter this week saying he had decided to return to the fold of the Roman Catholic Church.

"I feel he's got responsibility to his wife like any other man," Vice President Enock Kavindele told the state-run Zambia Daily Mail.

Milingo, 71, wed Sung at a South Korean Unification Church mass ceremony officiated by Reverend Sun Myung Moon in New York in May.

Zambia's Unification Church is meanwhile planning to stage a protest against the Vatican's decision to bar Maria from seeing her husband, who is reported to be on religious retreat.

"We are going to demonstrate against the Vatican," the church's spokesman Lawrence Banda told AFP Thursday.

"He has not been allowed to see his wife against his right," Banda complained.

"We urge the Zambian government to take up this matter and question the Vatican on the whereabouts of Milingo."

Milingo -- a healer, exorcist and even a singer -- has not been seen in public since his meeting with the pope at Castelgandolfo, outside Rome, on August 7 and Sung claims he is being held at the Vatican against his wishes.