THE Vatican plans to allow Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo to meet his South Korean wife to try to persuade her to end a hunger strike.
Maria Sung, 43, who married the bishop, 71, in a Unification Church ceremony on May 27, has refused to eat for six days. She protesting in Rome against Mgr Milingo’s decision to leave her after his recent reconciliation with the Roman Catholic Church.
Last weekend Yang Il Bae, the South Korean Ambassador to the Holy See, met Mrs Sung at the Vatican’s request. He tried unsuccessfully to give her a farewell letter from the bishop, who scandalised many Catholics by marrying Mrs Sung in a collective wedding ceremony held in New York by the Unification Church, the sect founded in 1954 by the Rev Sun Myung Moon.
After the meeting the Ambassador said that the Vatican would agree to a meeting between the bishop and Mrs Sung to prevent her continuing her hunger strike.
In June the Vatican threatened to excommunicate Mgr Milingo unless he renounced the wedding and declared his loyalty to the Catholic Church. Earlier this month the bishop met the Pope and began what the Vatican described as a period of “reflection and prayer”. Then Mrs Sung appeared in Rome and accused the Vatican of holding the Zambian bishop against his will, something the the Vatican strongly denies.