JOIN USSelf-styled messiah Sun Myung Moon dead
Sun Myung Moon, the self-styled messiah from South Korea who founded the Unification Church famed for its mass weddings and business empire spanning cars to sushi, died on Monday at the age of 92.
Moon, who was hospitalised with complications from pneumonia more than two weeks ago, at a hospital in the church’s headquarters in Gapyeong, east of Seoul.
Revered by his followers but denounced by critics as a cult-building charlatan who brainwashed church members, Moon was a deeply divisive figure whose shadowy business dealings saw him jailed in the United States.
His church, which he built into a global religious movement, was best known for organising mass weddings that married thousands — sometimes tens of thousands — of identically-clad couples in sports stadium ceremonies.
The couples often met for the first time on their wedding day after being personally paired up by Moon — despite often being of different nationalities and having no common language.
The church claimed its members — mocked as “Moonies” by the media — totalled three million at the time of his death, although some experts say numbers had fallen sharply from a peak in the 1980s to just several hundred thousand. “He was our father and God’s messiah. His body was custom-made by God so we believed he would live until 100,” Moon’s close aide Bo Hi Pak told reporters in Gapyeong.
Moon had been on life support since Friday after suffering multiple organ failure. A church statement said Moon’s body would "lie in state" for 13 days prior to his funeral on September 15.
Born to a farming family in 1920, Moon said he had a vision aged 15 in which Jesus asked him to complete his work on Earth. As the church rose to prominence in the 1970s and 80s, spreading to the US, it spawned a multi-billion dollar business empire encompassing construction, food, education, the media and even a professional football club. Media holdings include: “The Washington Times” newspaper and United Press International news agency, besides fishing.
Moon had 14 children with his second wife, Hak Ja Han. Hyung Jin Moon, the youngest of his seven sons took over as the church’s top leader in 2008 at the age of 28. In signs of a possible family rift, another son reportedly filed a lawsuit against his mother last year seeking 23.8 billion won ($22.3 million) allegedly sent to the church’s foundation without his permission.