Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo met his Korean acupuncturist wife for the first in more than three weeks today and told her face to face that he was leaving her to return to the Catholic Church.
The meeting, after nearly a month of religious and amorous confusion, might finally close a short but deeply peculiar chapter in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church.
The Vatican released a three-line statement saying the controversial Zambian cleric had met 43-year-old Ms Maria Sung during the day, and released a copy of a hand-written letter he gave her. The meeting took place in a downtown Rome hotel.
"My commitment to the life of the Church, including celibacy, does not allow me to be married," wrote Archbishop Milingo, 71, according to the letter released by the Vatican. "The calling of the Church is my primary pledge and the right one."
"I sympathise with your suffering. I am with you in everything," he signed off, in a letter dated August 27th and addressed to "My dear sister Maria Sung ."
Archbishop Milingo married Ms Sung in May in a ceremony organised by Rev Sun Myung Moon, the head of the Unification Church.
But after four months of marriage he unexpectedly turned up in Italy apparently seeking to make amends with the Vatican which had threatened to excommunicate him over the marriage.
After an audience with the Pontiff, Archbishop Milingo vanished from public view for more than two weeks before appearing on prime time television on Friday to say he was returning to the Church.
During his 16-day absence, Ms Sung declared a hunger strike and said she would not eat until she saw him face to face.
She also prayed in St Peter's Square every day and called frequent news briefings with members of the Unification Church to explain her cause.
In her own letter to the Pope Ms Sung said she was sorry if her attempts to see her husband had caused the Pontiff discomfort or offence.
"I know my husband loves you very deeply. I know that he has always...hoped to find a way of reconciling himself with the Holy Church as a married man as well as a believer," she wrote.
Ms Sung, who started her hunger strike 16 days ago, says Archbishop Milingo never left the Catholic Church to marry but wrote that if the African archbishop explained his thinking to her, she would not put up any barriers to his decision.
In a heart-wrenching letter to Ms Sung, Archbishop Milingo described his recent experiences as being like those of drowned bodies which are washed this way and that by the fickle tides of destiny.
"America deposited me on the shores of Italy. And Italy has carried me onto the beach of my Church, to the Vatican. And it is here where my people have opened their ears to me again, and they have carried me not to the grave but to a point where the spirit in me is revitalised."