Blessing ceremony of the Unification Church was first held in 1961 for 36 couples in Seoul, South Korea by Sun Myung Moon and his wife Hak Ja Han, shortly after their own marriage in 1960. All the couples were members of the Unification Church. Moon matched all of the couples except the 12 who were already married to each other from before joining the church, which was officially founded in 1954. Later Blessing ceremonies were larger in scale but followed the same pattern with all participants Unification Church members and Moon matching most of the couples. In 1982 the first large scale Blessing held outside of
Neil Albert Salonen Neil Albert Salonen Neil Albert Salonen (born 1946) is president of the University of Bridgeport, a private university in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He is a member of the Unification Church and became the president of the Unification Church of the United States in 1972. In 1974 he led the National Prayer and Fast Committee, a group founded by Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon to support United States president Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. In 1976 Salonen met with Senator Bob Dole to defend the Unification Church against charges made by its critics, including parents of some members. In that