Vatican City - The Vatican released a letter Friday in which Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo apologizesprofusely to the pope for hurting him and for scandalizing the Catholic Church by getting married earlier this year.
The letter, dated Aug. 25, was written four days before Milingo met face-to-face with his South Korean wife Maria Sung in a central Rome hotel and told her he was leaving her to return to the Catholic fold.
"I am so deeply sorry for the suffering and the great pain I have caused you personally, and for the scandal that I have visited on the Catholic Church, not to mention the three religious communities I oversee," the Zambian cleric wrote.
"I ask for your benediction, your love and your forgiveness. I am, Holy Father, your humble and obedient servant," Milingo, 71, signed off.
The letter marks a deeply repentant return to the Church and the Vatican, which Milingo appeared to spurn when in May he married Sung, 43, in a ceremony overseen by Rev Sun Myung Moon, the head of the Unification Church.
After the marriage, the Vatican threatened Milingo with excommunication, putting added pressure on the archbishop, who had already drawn disapproval for performing colorfulfaith-healing ceremonies and exorcisms in Zambia and Italy.
For four months Milingo and Sung lived together in New York, but nearly a month ago Milingo turned up unexpectedly in Rome and went to see Pope John Paul II, apparently to make amends.
In his letter to the pope, Milingo recalls that meeting and how he knelt down before the Holy Father to kiss his feet and ask forgiveness, like Mary Magdalene in the scriptures.
"I put myself in the clothes of the sinful woman in the Bible who continued to bathe the feet of Jesus with perfumed oil until she received consoling words of forgiveness from him, who was her master and creator," Milingo wrote.
ALIVE AGAIN
He goes on in the five-paragraph missive to relate how the pope had then raised his right hand toward Milingo and "spoken the words which still resonate in my ears":
"'In the name of Jesus, return to the Catholic Church."'
Milingo says that was all he needed to hear. "It was as if you had said, 'Milingo was dead and now he is returned to life'," the African prelate wrote in the letter.
The Vatican's release of the letter is perhaps the closing chapter in a month-long saga of love and spiritual longing which has engrossed Italy and Catholics worldwide with its potent mix of pathos, melodrama and occasional farce.
The defining showdown came Wednesday when Milingo met Sung at the Arcangelo hotel near the Vatican and told her he had decided to choose the Church over his love for her.
"My commitment to the life of the Church, including celibacy, does not allow me to be married," Milingo wrote in a handwritten letter, which was also released by the Vatican.
For 16 days before that meeting, Sung had been on a hunger strike, a dramatic step she decided to take after she claimed the Vatican had abducted her husband and drugged him in order to get him to return to the fold.
She said she would not eat until she saw her husband again.
After the meeting, Sung told reporters she loved her husband still, but would honor his decision.
"I have promised myself that I will live the rest of my days alone," she said, looking pale and drawn.
She is due to return to the United States Saturday, leaving Milingo to "return to my brother bishops," as he wrote to the pope.