September 

True Father planned to conduct a Moscow rally by 1981, but this was prolonged for nearly a decade due to court battles in the United States and the need to build up a stronger church. Having concluded the “Danbury Course” and established a multifaceted presence in America by 1985, True Father mounted a march to Moscow from 1985 to 1990. He understood that the Soviets respected strength and that any perceived weakness on the part of the West would set back the providence. Therefore he continued to expend resources in the fight against communism.

One major effort was a massive signature drive launched by CAUSA-USA on September 1, 1986. The goal was to obtain 10 million signatures, including names and addresses, on a form stating that the signers agreed with CAUSA-USA’s goals to:

1) Affirm a God-centered morality in America,
2) Uphold freedom for all,
3) Educate people about the dangers of atheistic communism.

Unificationists and some supporters worked aggressively in all fifty states to complete the drive by Thanksgiving. The signature drive “victory” had an especially positive effect on U.S. Unificationists, who gained self-esteem and confidence as a result of being able to accomplish one of True Father’s goals on the national level.

On September 1, 1997, True Father proclaimed a “New Start.” He began a tradition where all Unificationist families set aside one hour each morning from 6:00 to 7:00 to recite the Family Pledge (Core pledge of Unificationists), then hold a daily study and discussion of his words.

On October 13, 1997, True Father named the daily morning reading tradition Hoon Dok Hwe, which was understood to be a “gathering for reading and learning.” In addition to being a cornerstone of morning devotionals, the church sponsored Hoon Dok Hwe conferences for civic and religious leaders that focused on “reading and learning” True Father’s words. True Father’s words later would become the basis for the Cheon Seong Gyeong (2004) or “Heavenly Scripture.”

True Father ascended into the spirit world at 1:54 a.m. on September 3, 2012 (7.17 by the Heavenly Calendar) in the loving company of True Mother and True Family. He had been admitted to St. Mary’s Hospital in Seoul on August 3, 2012, due to cold symptoms that worsened into pneumonia.

On August 12, after 10 days of tests and treatment, he insisted on returning to the Cheon Jeong Museum where he went from room to room, visiting the East, West, North and South of the facility. The following day his condition worsened. Nevertheless, he insisted on visiting Cheongshim Middle and High School, the Cheongpyeong World Peace Center and the Cheongpyeong Training Center before returning to the Cheon Jeong Museum, where he offered his final prayer. Afterward he was rushed back to St. Mary’s Hospital, where he remained in the Intensive Care Unit until August 31, when True Mother directed that he return to Cheongshim Medical Center, the eighth floor, from where he ascended.
 

On September 3, 1967, the Takarazuka Training Center in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan opened. To build the training center, Unificationists had offered devotion by conducting a Mt. Fuji climbing tournament a year earlier.

A month before the training center opened, on August 7, True Parents visited Takarazuka, prayed over the building and declared the site a holy ground. The Takarazuka Training Center is currently used for outreach and to hold workshops for young Unificationists in the Kansai area.

On September 4, 1979, the Unification Theological School held its first graduation at the old church headquarters in Seoul. Around 600 people attended, and two students from the Department of Theology and 174 students from the Department of Divinity graduated. At this ceremony, the principal of the school encouraged the graduates to be shepherds that do not neglect to further explore the truth. The Unification Theology School is the birthplace for young pastors who then go on to study at the Sun Moon University Theological Department.

Elected leaders, diplomats, clergy and academics from Korea and abroad were among 15,000 mourners who gathered on September 6, 2012, to pay their respects to True Father. Visitation at the Cheongshim Peace World Center was held from September 6 to 14 from 8 a.m. until 10 p.m.

Visitors first watched a video of True Father and then moved to the first basement floor, where they received either an offering rose or a lily. They then had the opportunity to electronically input their names and a message to True Father. Numerous floral tributes expressing the condolences of various VIPs from Korea were on display. Beginning on September 9, the public had the opportunity to pay their respects and offer condolences to the family at the Cheon Jeong Gung (Peace Museum), where his holy remains lay in state.

The Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) on September 6 conferred the National Reunification Prize posthumously upon True Father, as reported by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). “Moon positively contributed to realizing the nation’s reconciliation and unity and the country’s peaceful reunification and achieving the prosperity common to the nation,” according to a KCNA report. On the same day the supreme leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, sent a floral wreath to the memorial altar for  Rev. Moon that had been set up in the World Peace Center in Pyongyang.

The Little Angels set off on their first overseas tour on September 7, 1965. After two years of intensive training and experience performing in Korea, the dance troupe performed in the United States in twenty-five states and in Washington, D.C. Audiences and the media praised them with reviews such as, “The young Korean children sang and danced as if angels themselves had come down and were performing.”

Their first performance was in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in front of Dwight Eisenhower, an ex-president of the United States. The three-month tour of the U.S. included 75 performances. On their way back to Korea, they held several additional performances in Japan and finally arrived home on December 26.

True Mother delivered the speech “True Parents and the Completed Testament Age” at the United Nations on September 7, 1993.

This followed her delivery of the same speech at the U.S. Capitol on July 28 before representatives from 115 congressional offices and was the springboard to her world tour in which she delivered the same message at 25 rallies in Japan in September, on 40 Korean college campuses in October and in 40 nations during November and December.

Prior to her Capitol Hill and UN speeches, on April 10, 1993, the movement published “True Parents and the Completed Testament Age” in the newspapers of 160 nations. True Father delivered the “Completed Testament Age” proclamation in 12 U.S. cities during May 1993 and True Mother in 21 more during late May and June. At the UN event, 105 nations sent embassy and consulate representatives, including more than 60 UN ambassadors. His Excellency Stoyan Ganev, president of the UN General Assembly, introduced True Mother. She was the first Korean woman to speak in the United Nations.

The University of Bridgeport awarded True Father an honorary doctorate on September 7, 1995. In addition to honoring his work as a religious leader, the award was an acknowledgment of his role in saving the financially troubled university in 1992. Dr. Richard Rubenstein, the school president, stated, “Without him, the university would have died.” The head of the faculty council was quoted in The New York Times as saying she was “happy the university could formally thank a benefactor who had given so much.”

The Universidad Santa Maria in Caracas, Venezuela, awarded True Father a Doctor Honoris Causa degree on September 12, 1996, the first anniversary of the founding of the Universal Peace Federation (UPF). The university’s vice president, Dr. Carlos Enrique Pena, who conferred the degree, explained, “When I learned about the life and work of Rev. Moon, I felt that it was the sacred duty of our university to offer the highest honor to recognize an extraordinary contribution to the field of human rights.”

The four-position foundation is basic to Unification theology as the structural component of the cosmos, whereby individuals, families and the created order become centered on God. The tragedy faced by God, humanity, and the created world, according to True Parents’ teaching, is that that foundation was usurped by Satan. As such, True Parents’ mission has been to substantially restore the four-position foundation centered on God.

At 9:40 on the morning of September 8, 1998, at North Garden in Kodiak, Alaska, True Parents gave a prayer of benediction for the declaration of 4.4 Jeol. True Father stated: “If we add together the numbers 1, 9, 9, 8, 9, and 8 [the date written out in numerals], we get the number 44. On account of the fall of the human ancestors, Satan has been claiming ownership of the number 4, which is the number of Heaven’s four-position foundation.”

On that day True Parents declared “4.4 Jeol,” which was understood to restore and establish the perfection number of the four-position foundation of earth. True Father stated that the installation of 4.4 Jeol means that God will be able to perform substantially His works of omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence. Moreover, humankind was to enter an era of total liberation through the globalization of the Holy Marriage Blessing.

According to True Father, the Gu Gu Jeol (9.9 Day) Liberation Ceremony of Cosmic Unification extended the previous year’s 4.4 Jeol declaration from the family to the cosmic level, “jeol” being the Korean word for “day” in the sense of a holiday or commemoration. The chief manifestation of this was the elimination of conditions needed to receive True Parents’ Holy Marriage Blessing.

True Father connected the Declaration Day of God’s Eternal Blessing (7.8 Jeol), established in 1997, to the 9.9 Jeol. The former, he said, culminated the re-establishment of elder sonship, parenthood and kingship in the era of restoration. Events afterward, he said, can be distinguished as events of creation in order to create the original world under God’s sovereignty. After 7.8 Jeol, True Father declared that God could bless Satan who was the origin of the Fall. Passing through Satan’s number 9 (at 09:09:09 on September 9, 1999) signified the starting point of God’s cosmic nation.

On September 10, 1999, at 10 minutes past 10 o’clock in the morning, True Father declared the Liberation of Cosmic Unification for the Parents of Heaven and Earth, or Sam Ship Jeol (3.10 Day). According to True Father, Gu Gu Jeol (9.9 Day) corrected all activities of the satanic world that went in the opposite direction and established a foundation upon which God can dwell.

On that foundation, at 10 minutes past 10 o’clock in the morning on September 10, the grace of blessing that enables humanity, in the name of True Parents, to embrace the entire universe from the highest position through the Day of Three Tens was established. The buffer zone between God’s borderline and Satan’s borderline, he said, united with a unified standard.

The terror attacks of September 11, 2001, impacted the Unificationists as it did people worldwide. Prior to 9/11, True Father had called for a 12,000 couple World Clergy Holy Marriage Blessing scheduled for September 22 at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The events of 9/11 not only forced the cancellation of the September 22 blessing but also challenged the interreligious and world peace premise upon which it was based. In the days after the World Trade Center’s destruction, Unificationist leaders and American Clergy Leadership Conference (ACLC) clergy who were gathered in New York to prepare for the September 22 Holy Marriage Blessing Ceremony, ministered directly to bereaved families as well as to police, firefighters and others at the site. Many went, starting from the first night.

Unificationists looked to True Father for guidance as to 9/11’s meaning. He was in Kodiak, Alaska, at the time of the attack and learned of it through a note that was passed to him during morning devotions. Dr. Chang Shik Yang, currently the Special Emissary to the Americas, reported then that True Father “remained by himself and prayed” for the next three days, not appearing in public. He then made the decision to cancel the clergy Marriage Blessing and flew to New York on September 18. On arrival, he offered his interpretation of the tragedy. In his words, “Jesus was on the cross, now America stands on the cross of the world.” The question was, how would America respond?

According to True Father: “Now is the time to change everything. America and Americans must take the lead in practicing ‘Love your enemy.’” As he saw it, religious leaders needed to take the lead. They “must unite beyond their religion and guide the political leaders of their nations.” He directed Unificationists convene an assembly on “Global Violence: Conflict and Hope” in October, and on November 15 he proclaimed Cheonju Pyeonghwa Tongil Guk(the Nation of Cosmic Peace and Unity). Just as Christianity emerged from the crucifixion and the Unification Church from the rubble of the Korean War, so True Father saw a new world rising from the devastation of 9/11.
 

True Father established the Universal Peace Federation on September 12, 2005, prior to the United Nations’ 60th anniversary. Its inaugural convocation was held before 376 delegates from 157 nations at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in New York. Its mission, True Father declared, was “to renew the existing United Nations and provide a new level of leadership as an ‘Abel-type’ United Nations.”

As part of the launch, he also proposed a “World Peace King Bridge Tunnel” to “build a passage for transport across the Bering Strait.” He described this as “a truly providential and revolutionary project” and envisioned it as a crucial “link” in “an international highway system connecting the world as a single community.”

UPF was a successor organization to the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace (IIFWP, established in 1999). In addition to its UN renewal and Bering Strait initiatives, UPF led the movement’s Middle East Peace Initiative (MEPI), which sponsored interfaith “Pilgrimages for Peace,” and its Northeast Asia Peace Initiative (NEAPI), which supported Korean unification.

The dedication ceremony of the Ocean Cheonjeong Palace Hotel on Geomun Island off the southern coast of Korea near the city of Yeosu, began at 10:30 a.m. at the newly built hotel located in Deokchon hamlet. More than three thousand people attended, including members of the American Clergy Leadership Conference (ACLC), church members, core members of the Tongil Group, chief executives of providential organizations and corporations, Ambassadors for Peace, Japanese leaders, leading celebrities of Yeosu and the surrounding area, and local residents of Geomun Island.

On September 13, 1974, one U.S. senator and twelve congressmen issued a formal invitation to all members of Congress and their staff to attend True Father’s speech on “America in God’s Providence” in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on October 8, 1974. The invitation read:

“Dear Colleague: The United States today is in need of strong moral leadership. The great moral and spiritual values upon which this nation was founded must be renewed at all levels of American society. Moreover, our nation seeks a clarification of its national identity and the role it must play as the leading nation of the free world.

“Many of us have been impressed with the work of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon from Korea. We well remember the three days of prayer and fasting on the Capitol steps conducted by young people last month, in which they sacrificed food and rest to ask God’s guidance for each of us on the critical decisions we were facing at that time. Beyond the exuberance and dedication of those young people is a deep concern for America and a fresh new vision of America’s role in God’s providence, which stems from the teaching of Reverend Moon.

“We in the Congress now have an opportunity to hear the message of this dynamic man.”

The invitation was signed by: Senator John Sparkman, Congressman Robert L.F. Sikes, Congressman O.C. Fisher, Congressman Bob Wilson, Congressman Tim Lee Carter, Congressman Robert H. Michel, Congressman John E. Hunt, Congressman Barber B. Conable Jr., Congressman Bill Chappell Jr., Congressman Charles W. Sandman Jr., Congressman Goodloe E. Byrne, Congressman Manuel Lujan Jr., and Congressman C.W. Bill Young.

On January 10, 1993, True Father announced “the transition today to the Completed Testament Age,” which shifted the focus of salvation from the individual to the family. In May 1993, True Parents began a speaking tour of 33 U.S. cities under the theme “True Parents and the Completed Testament Age.” True Mother delivered the message on July 28 on Capitol Hill and on September 7 at the United Nations. This was the springboard to a world tour in which True Mother delivered the Completed Testament Age message to audiences in forty countries.

From September 11 to 30, True Mother conducted twenty-five rallies in Japan, the highlight being her speech before 50,000 at the Tokyo Dome. On that occasion, which also commemorated the first anniversary of the Women’s Federation for World Peace (WFWP), Princess Eva Maria of the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Marilyn Quayle, wife of the former vice president of the United States, offered congratulatory remarks.

On September 14, 1995, fifty thousand representatives from 53 countries gathered in the Tokyo Dome for a rally to celebrate the third anniversary of the founding of the Women’s Federation for World Peace (WFWP).

True Mother spoke, as did former U.S. President George H.W. Bush. Mr. Bush, along with former first lady Barbara Bush, accompanied True Mother on a historic five-city tour which focused on building bridges of friendship between the Japanese and American people. The Bushes were inspired to do so as a result of their participation in the WFWP-sponsored “Sisterhood Ceremonies,” which brought together women from Japan and the United States in a demonstration of friendship on the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II.

On September 14, 1999, True Father opened the era in which blessed families were no longer to pray in the name of True Parents or any mediator but in their own names as blessed couples who have inherited True Parents’ realm of victory. True Father explained that this was meant to mark the era of “personal responsibility.” He said that couples should “report their work” and that it was no longer “a time to pray to receive blessings.” This guidance was consistent with True Father’s view that humankind had entered the Completed Testament Age.

True Parents officiated four major Marriage Blessing Ceremonies in 2002, all in the United States. On April 27, they officiated the 144,000 Clergy Couple Blessing, the main venue of which was the Sheraton National Hotel in Arlington, Virginia. On July 3, they officiated the 1.44 million Second Generation Christian Youth and World Religious Youth Blessing from the same main venue. Then on September 14, 2002, they officiated the Interreligious and International Blessing and Rededication Ceremony.

This historic Blessing ceremony was held in New York City’s Manhattan Center, just a few short miles from “Ground Zero,” where the twin towers of the World Trade Center had been destroyed barely one year earlier. Couples from many faiths participated as well as several Christian-Muslim couples in a poignant and moving statement of hope that New York’s Daily News said “couldn’t be more appropriate on the week America marked the first anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks.”

The final 2002 Blessing Ceremony, a “National Blessing for Reconciliation,” was conducted at the Marriott Crystal Gateway Hotel in Arlington, Virginia, on December 7. It marked the 61st anniversary of the Japanese bombing raid on Pearl Harbor and included some 300 Japanese leaders who expressed their wish for reconciliation among former enemy nations.   

True Father’s “Universal Seonghwa Ceremony” took place at Cheongshim World Peace Center on September 15, 2012, twelve days after his ascension on September 3.  From September 6 to 14, an estimated 157,000 people had come to pay their respects to True Farther, many waiting for hours to sign an electronic register and offer a rose or lily before True Father’s portrait. Most were able to offer a final bow to True Father, who lay in state at the Cheon Jeong Gung Peace Museum.

On the day of the Seonghwa, True Father’s body was carried reverently to a waiting vehicle and a flower-bedecked procession wound its way slowly down the mountainside to the stadium where tens of thousands of mourners waited. The casket was met at the main entrance by an honor guard of pallbearers and began a dignified processional entry through the center of the arena up to the main stage, which had been transformed into a garden of roses, lilies and chrysanthemums. True Father’s family accompanied the procession, and True Mother took her seat next to True Father for the last time.

Following the representative prayer, Seonghwa address and eulogies, True Father began his final journey, with the procession winding its way back up the narrow mountain road lined with flag-waving supporters to the burial site on the grounds of the Cheon Jeong Gung Peace Museum. There, close family members and leaders gathered to hear final words from True Father’s teachings. Each offered flowers and sprinkled soil onto the casket as it was lowered into the waiting earth.

True Parents conducted a grand ceremony in the Cheongshim Peace World Center for the bestowal of Korean surnames upon 172 ministers, 43 each from the North, South, East and West quadrants of the United States. They came to Korea representing America, Christendom and the entire world, with the purpose of registering in God’s Kingdom and testifying that God had anointed True Father.

The clergy, who understood and supported True Parents’ historic mission from the point of view of 77 different religious denominations, were united through a singular cause. By joining into and becoming part of a Korean family and exchanging names, they gave a powerful testimony to the Korean people of the fruits of True Parents’ work to remove all barriers between races and denominations. Through proclaiming that Korea is God’s Homeland and Hometown, they affirmed that God had chosen this nation to be the base for the Kingdom of God and the family culture that honors elders and has fidelity and faithfulness in every aspect of the family—from marriage to the filial piety of children to their parents.

The Games of the XXIV Olympiad took place from September 17 to October 2, 1988, in Seoul. The “Seoul Olympics” were significant not only for Korea as the second Asian nation to host the Olympic Games but also for the world, as the games brought together athletes from the communist and free-world nations for the first time since 1976.

These also were the last Olympic Games for the Soviet Union and East Germany, both of which would cease to exist by the time of the next Olympic Games in 1992. True Father recognized this and made a special effort to welcome Eastern Bloc and Soviet athletes, providing them with generous gifts and invitations to cultural events.

Although Coca-Cola was the official soft drink of the Games, athletes, friends and officials of many nations accepted more than 40,000 cans of McCol and bottles of Ginseng-Up. Following completion of the games, True Father proposed the holding of a World Festival of Culture (later designated as the World Culture and Sports Festival) as an “internal” complement to the Olympic Games.

David S.C. Kim was a founding member of the Unification Church in 1954 and its first overseas missionary, having gone to Swansea University College, Wales, as a U.N. scholar during the mid-1950s. He was the second Unificationist missionary to the United States, arriving in Portland, Oregon, on September 18, 1959, some ten months after Dr. Young Oon Kim had arrived in Eugene, Oregon. Like Miss Kim, he came to the United States on a student visa (the only other way out of Korea was via the diplomatic service) and enrolled at Western Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary. 

He was expelled for “heresy” just weeks before his graduation in 1961. This precipitated a series of crises as Mr. Kim successively enrolled in Portland University, the University of Oregon, and finally Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, in efforts to retain his student status and stay in the country. He nevertheless founded United Faith, Inc., or the “Northwest Family,” and directed a far-flung network of Unification centers extending as far east as Chicago during the 1960s.

He played a major role after True Parents’ arrival in America, translating for True Father, firing up members at the Belvedere Training Center, leading the International One World Crusade (IOWC), and later serving as the founding president of the Unification Theological Seminary (1975-1994).

Dr. Young Oon Kim, the first Unification Church missionary to America, legally incorporated the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (HSA-UWC) as a California corporation on September 18, 1961. Her primary motivation in establishing HSA-UWC was to stabilize her visa situation. However, she also recognized that for tax exemption purposes and legal protection, it was necessary for her group to be recognized by the government and to receive legal status as a religion. This incorporation became and still is the legal basis for the Unification tradition in the United States. It preceded the legalization of the church in both Korea and Japan.

True Father’s Madison Square Garden Speech, delivered on September 18, 1974, in New York City, was the culmination of his “Day of Hope” speaking tours which had begun nearly two years earlier. Building on all that had gone before, “MSG” launched a triumphant 8-City Tour through many of the same cities that had been visited in the 7-City tour of 1972.

Filling Madison Square Garden was the Unification Church of America’s most ambitious undertaking to date, and the arrival of seven hundred IOWC members in mid-August greatly augmented campaign preparations in New York City. Ten 70-member IOWC teams followed rigorous street canvassing schedules. Representatives from each of the forty nations where the Unification Church maintained missions and the remaining American church members — in all, about 2,000 — converged on New York City for a final week-long blitz prior to September 18. Members “wallpapered” Manhattan with eighty thousand two-by-three-foot posters with a portrait of True Father advertising that “September 18 Could Be Your Re-Birthday.” The New York Times reported, “His face is everywhere, it seems.”

The turnout at Madison Square Garden was astounding. At a kick-off banquet held in the Waldorf Astoria hotel on the previous evening approximately 1,600 prominent New Yorkers had a chance to see and hear True Parents. The following night, Madison Square Garden was filled to capacity, with an estimated 10,000 to 35,000 ticket-holders turned away.

True Father spoke on “The New Future of Christianity.” He proclaimed that Jesus had not come to die on the cross, that the crucifixion was the “secondary,” not the “original” mission of Christ, that the Lord would return “as the Son of Man in the flesh,” and that “that day is at hand.” With nearly two hundred journalists in attendance, widespread publicity helped ensure success in other cities. The pattern of overflow crowds and continued publicity was repeated throughout the tour.

True Father spoke before 300,000 people at the Washington Monument rally, which was the second of two major rallies held in 1976 to celebrate the United States’ bicentennial. The first had been the Yankee Stadium rally on June 1 in New York City. They were both part of the “Bicentennial God Bless America Festival,” which True Father stated was unique among the bicentennial observances because they were convened in the name of God and included international participants.

At Washington Monument, True Father spoke on “America and God’s Will.” He stated, “The United States of America, transcending race and nationality, is already a model of the unified world.” He also said that Judaism, Christianity and the Unification Church are sibling faiths and that Israel, the United States and Korea as sibling nations had “a common destiny representing God’s side” and needed “to restore the United Nations to its original purpose and function.” He called upon the three religions and nations to “join hands in a unified effort,” contributing “internally to the unification of world religions and externally to the unification of the world itself.”

After the Washington Monument Rally, True Father confessed: 

I feel light as a feather. I feel like I can fly. I have borne a tremendous burden of responsibility, but with the victory at Washington Monument, I feel like I have been liberated from the weight. I can now walk as a free man. I can hold my head up before heaven and earth.

Washington Monument was a watershed event in the history of the Unification Church in America. It concluded the initial proclamation phase of Rev. Moon’s ministry and opened the way for new initiatives in the fields of evangelism, education, interfaith relations, business, media and public life.

True Father established numerous Federations for World Peace following the end of the Cold War and into the new millennium. From September 21-24, 2004, the first International Peace Conference for Mongolian Leaders from Around the World took place in Seoul. This conference led to the creation of the Mongolian Peoples’ Federation for World Peace (MPFWP).

True Father defined Mongolian peoples as those born with the Mongolian birthmark, a bluish mark usually seen on the backside. He asserted that nearly three-quarters of the world’s population is linked to Mongolian roots and that the Mongolian birthmark appears not only in persons of the yellow race but also among many black and white people. He maintained that values preserved among Mongolian peoples, such as faith in absolute values, an understanding of human spirituality, belief in the existence of the spirit world, an emphasis on family tradition and the importance of lineage would play a significant role in bringing about the realization of a world of peace.

The initial conference brought together 300 participants from Mongolia, Korea, Japan, China and 34 other nations. The Mongolian Federation convened subsequent meetings under the auspices of the Universal Peace Federation.

Having completed his first Day of Hope speaking tour of eight American cities in 1972, True Father mobilized American Unificationists for a more ambitious 21-city Day of Hope tour to begin in New York City’s Carnegie Hall on October 3, 1973. By the end of August, more than four hundred Unificationists gathered to publicize the Day of Hope talks under the theme “Christianity in Crisis: New Hope.”

On September 22, a major rally was staged on the steps of Federal Hall on Wall Street. The New York Daily News carried a large photo and article on the rally. Time, Newsweek and Christianity Today all carried stories on the campaign, and Associated Press religion writer George W. Cornell’s generally positive feature story appeared in 79 newspapers throughout the United States.

More than 1,000 clergy from all faiths attended the Interfaith Prayer Breakfast and Day of Prayer and Healing to offer prayers for the victims of the 9/11 tragedy in New York and Washington, D.C.

True Father had called for a 12,000-couple World Clergy Marriage Blessing Ceremony to take place in New York’s Madison Square Garden on September 22, 2001. It was intended to build upon the Interfaith Marriage Blessing of 60 clergy couples the previous May in which Catholic Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo was blessed with Korean Unificationist Maria Sung. The tragic events of 9/11 intervened and the clergy Blessing was postponed.

In lieu of the Blessing, an interfaith prayer breakfast brought together more than 1,000 clergy and guests in the Grand Ballroom of the Manhattan Center and an outdoor Day of Prayer and Healing rally took place at the Adam Clayton Powell State Office Building in Harlem. The rally attracted some 3,000 participants as well as coverage on CNN, CBS and other media outlets.  Forty American Clergy Leadership Conference (ACLC) ministers had counseled police and firefighters at Ground Zero the night before the prayer breakfast and rally and continued to do so in the days that followed.

In 2000, True Father’s proposal to renew the United Nations through incorporating an interreligious peace council launched the United Nations Providence. The following year, True Father began the Ambassadors for Peace program. In 2003, he established the Interreligious and International Peace Council (IIPC), and in 2005, on the occasion of the UN’s 60th anniversary, he founded the Universal Peace Federation (UPF). The core objective of these combined initiatives was “to work cooperatively with the United Nations and to serve and support that institution as it seeks to fulfill its own global mission.”

Two years later, on September 23, 2007, True Father launched what he termed the “Substantial” Abel UN. Conducted at the Manhattan Center in New York City, the inauguration brought together representatives from 192 nations seated at UN-style conference tables. Flags and regalia added to the atmosphere.

True Father’s keynote address, augmented by extemporaneous comments, lasted three hours. In it, he referred to UPF as “an Abel-type counterpart to the UN” and to the new initiative as the “Peace UN.” He expressed hope that it would “lead the way for millions of Ambassadors for Peace throughout the world … to fulfill the heavenly will of creating ‘One Family under God.’” Finishing at 11:00 p.m., True Father penned an approximately thirty-foot calligraphic message that read, in Chinese characters, “May the Sovereignty of the God of True Love, the Sacred Reign of Peace, Last Forever.” He then struck a giant gong, sealing the evening’s proceedings.

The Transition of the Three Ages Realm of Oneness Unification Blessing Ceremony was held at the Cheongpyeong Heaven and Earth Training Center on September 24, 2000. The ceremony was conducted on the last day of the third workshop for wives’ of the Unification movement.

On this day True Father asked twenty-four Unificationist-born young adults—twelve men and twelve women—to line up and placed a granddaughter in front of one line and a grandson in front of the other and then gave his benediction. He said, “The spiritual and physical worlds, which divided as a result of the Fall, have become one through the victorious realm of the True Parents of Heaven and Earth. Children in the spiritual world and on earth should inherit this and achieve the Registration Blessing with the parents.” (Materials provided by the FFWPU History Compilation Committee)

Zambian Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo sparked a controversy which reached to the highest levels of the Roman Catholic Church when he married Maria Sung in an Interfaith Clergy Marriage Blessing Ceremony conducted by True Parents on May 26, 2001.

Upon an appeal by Pope John Paul II, he renounced the union a few months later and receded from public view for five years before resurfacing dramatically in 2006 to announce that he had rejoined his wife and was launching an independent charismatic ministry, Married Priests Now.

Archbishop Milingo was given a deadline to submit a letter of repentance, which he refused to do. On September 24, 2006, he took the irrevocable step of installing four married men as bishops. Two days later, a Vatican communiqué announced that for this “public act” Archbishop Milingo had incurred automatic excommunication. A Vatican summit, convened by Pope Benedict XVI on November 16, 2006, reaffirmed the church’s position on clerical celibacy.