Founder Of Unification And Self Proclaimed Messiah The Rev. Sun Myung Moon Is Dead.

 Evangelist Reverend Sun Myung Moon

Rev Moon and His wife Ha jak Moon.

Rev Mon and North Korean Leader Kim.

The Rev Sun Myung Moon died at a church-owned hospital. He was 92 years old

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the self-proclaimed messiah who turned his Unification Church into a worldwide religious movement, has died. 

The 92-year-old who famously befriended North Korean leaders as well as U.S. presidents died on Monday at a church-owned hospital near his home in Gapyeong, northeast of Seoul, according to church officials.

His death came two weeks after being hospitalised with pneumonia, Unification Church spokesman Ahn Ho-yeul said. 

Moon's wife and children were believed to have been at his side.

Moon, born in a town that is now in North Korea, founded his religious movement in Seoul in 1954 after surviving the Korean War. 

He preached new interpretations of lessons from the Bible and gained fame - and notoriety - in the 1970s and 1980s for holding mass weddings of thousands of followers.

The ceremonies often included couples from different countries, whom Moon matched up in a bid to build a multicultural religious world.

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. 

The church responded by saying that many other new religious movements faced similar accusations in their early stages.

Unification Church: The movements founder Reverend Sun Myung Moon and his wife Hak Ja Han Moon join hands to bless couples during a mass wedding ceremony

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.

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.

Reputations: Reverend Moon with North Korean leader Kim Il Sung

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.

Born in 1920 in what is today North Korea, Moon said he was 16 when Jesus Christ called upon him to complete his unfinished work. 

Blessing: Sun Myung Moon and his wife bless the brides and the grooms in a mass wedding ceremony at Chamsil Olympic Stadium in Seoul in 2000

Moon is survived by his second wife and 10 children.

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