Married Priests Now! (MPN!) is an advocacy group founded and formerly led by

Emmanuel Milingo Emmanuel Milingo (born June 13, 1930) is an excommunicated former Roman Catholic archbishop from Zambia. He was ordained in 1958; in 1969, aged 39, Milingo was consecrated by Pope Paul VI as the bishop of the Archdiocese of Lusaka. In 1983, he ...

, a former

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD * Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...

bishop from

Zambia Zambia (), officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central, Southern and East Africa, although it is typically referred to as being in Southern Africa at its most central point. Its neighbours are t ...

. MPN is a liberal

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

organization calling for relaxing the rules concerning marriage in the Latin Rite

Catholic priesthood The priesthood is the office of the ministers of religion, who have been commissioned (" ordained") with the Holy orders of the Catholic Church. Technically, bishops are a priestly order as well; however, in layman's terms ''priest'' refers onl ...

. Milingo has said that "There is no more important healing than the reconciliation of 150,000 married priests with the 'Mother Church', and the healing of a Church in crisis through renewing marriage and family."

Automatic excommunication

Milingo gained international attention in September 2006 when he illicitly ordained four married men ( George Augustus Stallings Jr. of Washington, D.C.; Peter Paul Brennan of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

; Patrick Trujillo of Newark,

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

; and Joseph Gouthro of

Las Vegas Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a state in the Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the 7th-most extensive, ...

) as bishops. Milingo organized two meetings in the fall of 2006 of many married Catholic priests from the USA, Europe, South America, and Africa in New Jersey. Partly in response to Milingo's initiative a meeting was held in Rome to discuss whether to change the rule of celibacy. It was decided not to change the rule. Due to Milingo’s excommunication and his connection with the non-Catholic religious leader Sun Myung Moon, two groups of former Catholic priests who are pushing for a married priesthood, issued warnings against MPN.

Policy of laicizations

Archbishop

Alain Paul Lebeaupin Alain Paul Charles Lebeaupin (2 March 1945 – 24 June 2021) was a French prelate of the Catholic Church who joined the diplomatic service of the Holy See in 1979 and was the Apostolic Nuncio to the European Union from 2012 to 2020. Early lif ...

warned in 2009 that Catholic priests who had joined Married Priests Now! could be declared laymen by the Church, which would add a new penalty to Milingo's '' latae sententiae'' excommunication. On December 17, 2009, the Holy See announced that Milingo had been

laicized In the canon law of the Catholic Church, the loss of clerical state (commonly referred to as laicization, dismissal, defrocking, and degradation) is the removal of a bishop, priest, or deacon from the status of being a member of the clergy. The t ...

, calling him "Mister Milingo".Vatican defrocks exorcist archbishop who married
/ref>

References

{{reflist

External links

Married Priests Now Website
International website.
Links to other Married Priests websites and related
Clerical celibacy Marriage reform Catholic dissident organizations Critics of the Catholic Church Marriage and religion

Automatic excommunication

Policy of laicizations

See also

References

External links