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
The Washington Times The Washington Times The Washington Times is an American daily newspaper that covers general interest topics with a particular emphasis on American politics. It was founded on May 17, 1982, by Sun Myung Moon (the leader of Unification movement, also known as the Unification Church) and owned by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate founded by Moon, until 2010, when Moon and a group of former executives purchased the paper. It is currently owned by the conglomerate Operations Holdings, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Unification movement. Its daily edition is distributed throughout the District of Columbia