Sun Myung Moon, founder of Unification Church, dies at 92

[X Factor 1,112]

Sun Myung Moon, founder of Unification Church, dies at 92

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the self-proclaimed messiah who turned his Unification Church into a worldwide religious movement and befriended North Korean leaders as well as U.S. presidents, has died, church officials said Monday. He was 92.

Moon died Monday at a church-owned hospital near his home in Gapyeong, northeast of Seoul, two weeks after being hospitalized with pneumonia, Unification Church spokesman Ahn Ho-yeul told The Associated Press. Moon's wife and children were at his side, Ahn said.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Church officials planned to meet later Monday to discuss mourning and funeral arrangements. The church will likely hold a 13-day mourning period and start accepting mourners at its nearby religious center on Wednesday, Ahn said.

Moon founded his Bible-based religion in Seoul in 1954, a year after the Korean War ended, saying Jesus Christ personally called on him to complete his work.

The church gained fame -- and notoriety -- in the 1970s and 1980s for holding mass weddings of thousands of followers, often from different countries, whom Moon matched up in a bid to build a multicultural religious world. His followers were derisively referred to by critics as as "Moonies."

The church was accused of using devious recruitment tactics and duping followers out of money; parents of followers in the United States and elsewhere expressed worries that their children were brainwashed into joining. The church responded by saying that many other new religious movements faced similar accusations in their early stages.

In later years, the church adopted a lower profile and focused on building a business empire that included the Washington Times newspaper, the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan, Bridgeport University in Connecticut, as well as a hotel and a fledgling automaker in North Korea. It acquired a ski resort, a professional soccer team and other businesses in South Korea, and a seafood distribution firm that supplies sushi to Japanese restaurants across the U.S.

“Words cannot convey my heart at this time,” said Thomas P. McDevitt, president of The Washington Times. “Rev. Sun Myung Moon has long loved America, and he believed in the need for a powerful free press to convey accurate information and moral values to people in a free world. The Washington Times stands as a tangible expression of those two loves.”

“As controversial as Rev. Moon was in the United States, I got to know him as a man whose heart was focused on bringing together people of different faiths to bridge divides. His call on people of faith to serve others is an important legacy,” Neil Bush, chairman of Points of Light and son of President George H.W. Bush, was quoted as saying by The Times.

The Unification Church claims millions of members worldwide, though church defectors and other critics say the figure is no more than 100,000.

In 2009, Moon married 45,000 people in simultaneous ceremonies worldwide in his first large-scale mass wedding in years. Some were newlyweds and others reaffirmed past vows. He married an additional 7,000 couples in South Korea in February 2010. The ceremonies attracted media coverage but little of the controversy that dogged the church in earlier decades.

For the rest of the story

[X Factor 1,112]

Anybody here got married in one of his mass weddings?

[웃 910]

This is sad. I think he really was a God. Very sad to see a God go.

[X Factor 1,112]

To some sheeple he was

[웃 910]

If you do not believe he was a God you are going to hell. Luckily for me I believe He was a God.