Rev Sun Myung Moon, the self-proclaimed messiah who turned his Unification Church into a worldwide religious movement and gained fame and notoriety in equal measure for his mass weddings, has died. He was 92-year-old.
His death came just two weeks after being hospitalised with pneumonia,Moon’s wife and children were believed to have been at his side.His youngest son, the Rev. Hyung-jin Moon, was named the church’s top religious director in April 2008 and will now lead the movement.
He preached new interpretations of lessons from the Bible and made headlines in the 1970s and 1980s for holding mass weddings of thousands of followers.The church was accused of using devious recruitment tactics and duping followers out of money, while parents of followers in the U.S. in particular expressed worries that their children were brainwashed into joining.