While TomKat Prepares to Wed, Exorcist Archbishop Heads to Italian Altar

ROME, Nov. 15, 2006 — -- As I head down to Rome today, wedding bells are in the air. Controversy, too, at the Vatican and at a top-secret location.

Marriage is a pretty straightforward sacrament, a rite of passage that most of us get around to eventually. Two people commit to each other in front of God, their friends and their families. A beautiful thing, and as it happens, I myself got married in Rome.

But in the stories I'll be covering this week, there are plenty of powerful naysayers.

The first has to do with a Roman Catholic archbishop, a man who's not supposed to be married at all. Emmanuel Malingo has been a bit of a maverick. He's an exorcist, known to borrow liberally from religious practices in his native Zambia.

He's also the founder of the group Married Priests Now! He got married himself (for the second time) in 2001. Even better: This Catholic archbishop got married in the Unification Church, in one of those mass weddings the Moonies made famous. The Rev. Moon himself presided over the ceremony.

But even that did not cost Malingo his bishop's mitre. A month later, Pope John Paul II welcomed Archbishop Malingo back into the fold. But John Paul's successor is not so tolerant. In September, when Malingo ordained four more married bishops in Washington, D.C., without the pope's permission, Pope Benedict excommunicated them all.

In the eyes of the church, marriage cost these priests their immortal souls.

Tomorrow the pope will host a special meeting with the curia -- the church equivalent of a Cabinet meeting.

According to the Vatican, the only item on the agenda is "reflection" on the issues raised by this schism. The pope is unlikely to relax the celibacy rule. The party line at the Vatican is that to do so would be an insult to every priest who has kept true to his vows.

But Pope Benedict is under pressure to give some thought to the issue in part because Malingo is a popular, charismatic church leader in Africa where Catholicism is expanding fast.