After two months of marriage, all Dr Maria Sung has left of her husband are his priestly vestments and a few personal belongings. Her husband, Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, has not been seen in public for a week and Dr Sung is left seeking solace in what he left behind, convinced he is being kept prisoner by the Vatican.
"These are his most precious things," Dr Sung said, pointing to a portable mass kit, a Bible and a cross laid out carefully on the spare bed in her hotel room. "He left them all with me. The only thing I can think is that he believed he would just go and come straight back."
Archbishop Milingo (71), who had previously caused the Vatican to cringe by carrying out colourful exorcisms and healing ceremonies, left the Catholic Church reeling at the end of May by marrying Dr Sung at a mass wedding organised by the Rev Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.
"I was very, very happy," said Dr Sung (43). "After we married we never left each other. Wherever he travelled, I travelled with him," she added.
Last week, however, Archbishop Milingo unexpectedly flew to Rome to meet Pope John Paul in an apparent attempt to mend bridges with the Vatican, which threatened to excommunicate him.
Archbishop Milingo met reporters last Wednesday but then vanished from public view, fuelling a bizarre battle between the Vatican on one side and the Unification Church and Dr Sung on the other.
They accuse the Vatican of holding Archbishop Milingo against his will and have questioned the authenticity of a letter released on Tuesday by the Catholic Church in which the African prelate renounced his life with his wife and turned his back on Mr Moon.
Dr Sung, who has said she may be pregnant with Archbishop Milingo's child, has gone on hunger strike and says she won't eat until she talks to Archbishop Milingo face to face or until she dies. "If he were here now, I would remind him of the many times we said we were the same sort of people," Dr Sung said. "I used to say to him: I'm your tail. The tail can never be separated from the body. We are two people who should never be separated," she added.
"We celebrated Mass every day without exception," she said, pointing to a soft black briefcase on the bed which contained a portable mass kit including a chalice and flasks of holy wine and water.
"This is the Bible he used to read every night at bedtime before going to sleep. Then he would kiss it and put it under his pillow," Dr Sung said. Archbishop Milingo read the Bible to her in English and explained it in a mix of English and Italian, she added.
For Dr Sung, the memories bring both comfort and pain. "They make me sad. I sometimes cry when I see the things he loves so much because they're here and he's not," she said. "But they are also a comfort because maybe they will bring him back."