Photo courtesy of H.S.A.-U.W.C., via Washington Times
The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a self-proclaimed messiah whose Unification Church gained international notoriety for its mass weddings, died Monday at a hospital near his hometown of Gapyeong, South Korea. He was 92. Moon entered the church-owned hospital about two weeks ago in a bout with pneumonia.
Beyond the church he created in 1954, Moon was best known to U.S. residents as the founder of The Washington Times, a newspaper he launched in 1982 to combat what he saw as the anti-Unificationist leanings of The Washington Post
“Words cannot convey my heart at this time,” Thomas McDevitt, the paper’s president, said in its obituary for its owner. [The] 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.”
The Washington Times’ hagiographic obituary describes Moon as “visionary businessman and lifelong champion of the free press.” In addition to the Times, Moon launched newspapers and magazines around the United States and the world under the banner of the News World Communications, a church-backed organization that eventually grew to own the newswire service United Press International. The Washington Times was spun off from News World in 2010 when Moon and three former editors purchased direct control of the paper.
But Moon’s ownership of a daily broadsheet in the nation’s capital gave way to what many saw as a pattern of financial recklessness. By the Times’ 20th anniversary in 2002, the Columbia Journalism Review estimated Moon had sunk $2 billion into the paper.
More recently, the paper faced extinction in 2009 after the Unification Church cut off direct funding after ideological distancing between church leaders and Preston Moon, Sung Myung Moon’s estranged son who owned the paper. Layoffs ensued, with the newsroom shrinking by about 40 percent, along with the end of the Times’ Sunday edition and all sports coverage. The paper was on the brink of disappearing entirely in 2010 before Moon purchased it from his son that November.
The TImes’ obituary also gives considerable focus to Moon’s ecumenical diplomacy:
The energetic evangelist traveled the world numerous times and went on speaking tours as recently as 2011. He started or inspired hundreds of organizations and met with countless world leaders, notably such communist leaders as former Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev and North Korea’s Kim Il-sung. On a trip in July 2008, he and his family survived a helicopter crash in Korea.
Here’s a 47-minute British documentary following three couples getting married in one of the mass weddings (which TLC aired last month):
2012 – 120531 – Married to the Moonies from European Office on Vimeo.
Jen Chung contributed reporting.
