Catholic Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo – the faith healer who married in the Rev Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church in 2001 but later returned to the fold – has scandalised the Vatican yet again.

He went missing last month from a convent south of Rome where he had been living in near-seclusion for four years, then resurfaced in Washington on Wednesday.

Effectively making himself a renegade yet again, he held a news conference to say that his new mission was to persuade the Vatican to allow priests to marry.

The Roman Catholic Church insists that its priests remain celibate, despite a shortage of priests.

A Vatican source said Church officials were "shocked" by the archbishop's new outburst and said he would be disciplined.

In 2001, the former archbishop of Lusaka, Zambia, stunned the Vatican when he disappeared and showed up in New York, where he married Maria Sung, a 43-year-old Korean doctor chosen for him by the controversial South Korean-born evangelist, Moon.

He attended a mass wedding in a tuxedo and kissed his white-gowned wife for the cameras in a ceremony in New York .

Archbishop Milingo and Ms Sung later returned to Italy separately. He said he wanted to return to the Church. She went on a hunger strike, gave bedside interviews in her hotel room and claimed the Vatican had kidnapped her husband. 

The Vatican, which never recognised the marriage, threatened Archbishop Milingo with excommunication. But Pope John Paul II showed leniency and brought him back to the fold.

Archbishop Milingo left Ms Sung, rejoined the Church and went into seclusion for a year of rehabilitation in South America before he returned to Italy , and into a convent near Rome .

A Vatican source said he did not expect Pope Benedict to be as kind.

In the book Fished out of the Mud, published four years ago, Archbishop Milingo said the Rev Moon may have brainwashed him.

He refused to reveal if he consummated the marriage. It was not clear if Archbishop Milingo was now planning to reunite with Ms Sung in the US .

Archbishop Milingo, 76, was born in a poor farm village in Zambia , and went to St Mary's Presbyterial School in Chipata. He attended the Kasina Seminary and Kachebere Seminary. 

He was ordained as a priest in 1958, and was the parish priest in Chipata when he founded the Zambia Helpers Society. 

Pope Paul VI consecrated him as the bishop of the archdioceses of Lusaka , as one of Africa's youngest bishops where he served for 14 years.

In 1983 he was asked to resign as the Archbishop of Lusaka because of his "non-conventional" healing ministry, and was sent to the Vatican . 

In the 1970s, Archbishop Milingo became famous as a powerful spiritual healer. While in Rome , he conducted many healing masses, which attracted thousands of people. This did not sit well with some bishops in Rome . 

"Just because something is good, is for the welfare of the Lord, doesn't mean it won't meet opposition," he said then.