Ndola, Zambia - RENEGADE Zambian Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo has teamed up with Dan Brown, author of the controversial film and novel, The Da Vinci Code.
According to the Catholic World News and The Universe newspapers, the African prelate is reported to have reached a tentative agreement to assist Brown with a future novel about exorcism.
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Milingo had previously caused controversy by suggesting that there were devil worshippers within the Catholic Church.
The Catholic newspapers reported that Milingo met with representatives of Dan Brown to discuss the possibilities of working with him on a new novel about exorcisms.
In addition to his work with Brown on the new novel, Milingo is also said to have reached an agreement to collaborate with Sony Pictures in the production of a film based on Brown's earlier novel entitled 'Angels and Demons'.
Milingo and Dan Brown are scheduled to have a meeting in late September or early October at Gatwick.
Vatican officials have been intensely concerned about Archbishop Milingo's behaviour since the mercurial prelate disappeared from his residence outside Rome in June.
It is feared that Archbishop Milingo's collaboration with the author of an anti-Catholic best seller, will lend greater credence to Brown's conspiracy theories about the Catholic Church and Christianity in general.
Dan Brown's book and film The Da Vinci Code is based on a premise, which the author contends is factual, that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, and their descendants are alive today.
The novel and film depicts the Catholic Church as a brutal conspiracy to suppress this knowledge. Church leaders have roundly denounced The Da Vinci Code, which has sold over 40 million copies, as a vicious assault on Christian beliefs.
The Zambian prelate, who was appointed in 1969 to head the Lusaka diocese, first caused concern at the Vatican because of his unorthodox "healing services," at which he was reported to be performing exorcisms as well as healing physical ailments.
Archbishop Milingo's healing services drew widespread attention in Zambia, but also provoked complaints that he was acting as a "witch doctor," and eventually Vatican officials were convinced that he should be replaced.
In 1982, he was summoned to Rome, and eventually pressured to resign as Bishop of Lusaka.
Since that time, he has been living in Italy, without a pastoral assignment. In 1996, new complaints from Italian bishops about his impromptu "healing services" in various dioceses prompted a new disciplinary caution from the Vatican, instructing him not to hold services without the approval of the local bishop.
Archbishop Milingo's most spectacular departure from orthodoxy came in 2001, when he announced his adherence to the Unification Church, led by the self-proclaimed Korean messiah, Sun Myung Moon.
In a mass wedding ceremony in New York, he took a Korean bride, chosen for him by Reverend Moon. In August of the same year a repentant Archbishop Milingo returned to Rome for a personal meeting with Pope John Paul II, renounced his attempted marriage, reaffirmed his Catholic faith, and disappeared for a year of reflection and prayer.
This year, after his disappearance in June, the archbishop surfaced in Washington, DC, on July 12, in the company of the self-proclaimed Archbishop George Stallings, a former Catholic priest who now heads a sect known as the African-American Catholic Congregation.
In an appearance with Stallings at the National Press Club, Archbishop Milingo called for an end to priestly celibacy.
The African archbishop later revealed that he had returned to the Korean woman he sought to marry and had always considered his wife.