On September 24, 2006, Milingo consecrated four men as bishops (including American George Augustus Stallings Jr., who had established an independent denomination) without a papal mandate.

On December 17, 2009, the Holy See Press Office announced that Milingo had been reduced to the lay state, making him no longer a member of the Catholic clergy.

[5] Born in 1930 in Mnukwa, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) to Yakobe Milingo and Tomaida Lumbiwe, he was educated at St Mary's Minor Seminary in Chipata.

In 1999 and 2000, Milingo participated in mass-marriage ceremonies conducted by Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church in Japan and Korea, for which he received a severe written reprimand from Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican Secretary of State.

[6] In 1983, Pope John Paul II transferred Milingo to Rome because of his inappropriate use of his office of exorcism and his role in causing divisions in the Lusaka archdiocese.

[6] He was barred from practicing as a priest and bishop in Zambia,[7] but the Pope appointed Milingo a "special delegate" of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers.

[6] In 1992, Milingo endorsed the book On the Eucharist, a Divine Appeal, a collection of messages reputed to have been given by Jesus Christ in an apparition and written from September 8, 1987, to 1991 by Sr. Anna Ali, DOJS.

These messages were a traditional call to conversion and eucharistic devotion, as well as expressing sadness over the current state of the Catholic priesthood.

Although Milingo did not hold office as a diocesan bishop at the time, his name appears on the book's purported imprimatur, with the date March 17, 1992.

In the late 1990s, Milingo became well known in traditionalist and sedevacantist circles for a speech he gave at the Our Lady of Fatima 2000 International Conference on World Peace, organized by Canadian priest Nicholas Gruner and held November 18–23, 1996.

In July 2001, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a Public Canonical Admonition officially warning Milingo to separate from Moon and from contacts with the Unification Church.

"[11] In August 2001, Milingo met with Pope John Paul II, who appealed to him: "In the name of Jesus Christ, return to the Catholic Church."

Archbishop George Augustus Stallings, Jr., also an excommunicated priest, who had founded his own Imani Temple African-American Catholic Congregation and married in 2001 at the same mass event as Milingo, spoke as well.

The statement explained the effect of the action as "loss of the rights and duties attached to the clerical state, except for the obligation of celibacy; prohibition of the exercise of any ministry, except as provided for by Canon 976 of the Code of Canon Law in those cases involving danger of death; loss of all offices and functions and of all delegated power, as well as prohibition of the use of clerical attire.