Unification Church founder Moon dies at 92

In this Saturday, June 25, 2005 file photo, Unification Church leader Rev. Sun Myung Moon speaks during his “Now is God’s Time” rally in New York. Moon, self-proclaimed messiah who founded the Unification Church, has died at age 92 church officials said Monday, Sept. 3, 2012. AP/John Marshall Mantel

SEOUL—Sun Myung Moon, a self-proclaimed messiah who founded the controversial Unification Church and turned it into a multi-billion dollar business empire, died in South Korea early Monday at the age of 92.

Moon, who was hospitalized with complications from pneumonia more than two weeks ago, died just before 2 am (1700 GMT Sunday), Moon’s spokesman told AFP.

The church on Friday said the religious leader had critical organ failure and quoted doctors as saying he had entered “an irreversible stage of his condition”.

Moon was first admitted to the intensive-care unit at St. Mary’s Hospital in Seoul in mid-August but was shifted to a church hospital following the grim diagnosis from doctors.

Treating him on “holy ground” would have “greater providential significance”, the church’s International Vice-President Joon Ho Seuk said in a statement last week.

“He has overworked in recent months despite his age, having travelled to the US every month,” Moon’s spokesman told AFP, confirming his death.

Moon, a South Korean, was born to a farming family in what is now North Korea. He said he was inspired by a vision of Jesus at age 15 to complete the messianic mission interrupted by the crucifixion.

Rejected by Korean Protestant churches, he founded his own church.

The Unification Church — set up in Seoul in 1954 and officially called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification — is one of the world’s most controversial religious organizations.

Its devotees are often dubbed “Moonies” after the founder and it is widely known for conducting mass weddings among followers involving hoardes of couples.

In one of the most recent such events, he gave “blessings” to thousands of couples from across the world in a mass wedding held in the South in March this year.

The church says it evangelises in some 200 countries and according to another spokesman has some three million followers worldwide.

The church’s vast business empire includes The Washington Times newspaper and the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan.

Moon, who met North Korea’s then-ruler Kim Il-Sung in Pyongyang in 1991, also has business interests there. A church-affiliated firm, Pyeonghwa (Peace) Motors, established a joint carmaking business in the North in 1999.

He had 14 children with his current wife and several are involved in his empire. Hyung Jin Moon, youngest of his seven sons, succeeded his father as the church’s most senior leader in 2008 at the age of 28.