Healer's Trials

Split over an archbishop

When the Rev. Emmanuel Milingo was named Roman Catholic Archbishop of Lusaka in 1969, his qualifications seemed considerable: he was energetic, pious, modest, well educated and possessed of a popular touch. Milingo has not exactly lived up to the Vatican's hopes. Since April, he has been sequestered at a monastery in Rome for a year of "rest and reflection," as well as psychiatric observation. Milingo's detention has angered many Zambian Catholics, who held two large rallies in Kabwe last week demanding that the Vatican "release" their archbishop by Nov. 4. Some are even threatening schism.

The issue that threatens to split African Catholicism is Milingo's unconventional ministry, in particular his faith healing and exorcism. While in Rome nine years ago, Milingo experienced a trancelike vision after meeting Italian priests in the Catholic charismatic movement, which, with Vatican acceptance, promotes such uncommon practices as speaking in tongues and faith healing.

Back in Africa, Milingo began praying for cures of ailing supplicants, and soon hundreds were reporting miracles. One American nun, Frances Randall, a psychology lecturer in Nairobi, says she was cured of a painful broken coccyx bone. Cure-seekers streamed to Lusaka from across Africa, and Milingo healed others in the U.S. and Europe. When he attended an African bishops' conference, the sick congregated outside the hall.

Milingo's critics accuse him, in effect, of being a kind of Catholic witch doctor who is reinforcing faith in tribal magic when he should be promoting modern medicine. The archbishop's opponents have also charged him with neglect of his administrative duties. A group of African bishops in 1978 ordered a halt to Milingo's healings. When he persisted, the Vatican finally summoned him to Rome.

Despite his belief in God's power to heal, Milingo uses no charms or spells and insists that he is not opposed to medical science; in fact, he founded a mobile field hospital and asked local doctors to examine his cures. He contends that his faith healing is a form of "inculturation," the adaptation of Christianity to a local culture, just as the Second Vatican Council taught. Says Milingo: "The white missionaries are backward. They do not understand what is happening in their own countries. They must make up their minds whether they want to Christianize Africa or not."

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