U.N.
mass wedding celebrates family Peace
blessing highlights conference by
Larry Witham The
Washington Times, Page A2 January 28, 2001 Two
hundred couples were married at the United Nations yesterday, vowing
marital fidelity and advocating the importance of the family to world
leaders in a ceremony attended by diplomats, several heads of state
and directors of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The
"world peace blessing," which required overseas travel by
many of the young couples, was the centerpiece of a four-day conference
promoting the U.N. leadership's millennial theme of a "Dialogue
Among Civilizations." Earlier
in the day, Comoro Islands President Assoumani Azzali hosted a forum
at the U.N. headquarters at which former Vice President Dan Quayle
and Nobel laureate Lech Walesa, the former president of Poland, spoke
of the family's role in social stability, freedom and cooperation
between nations. South
Korean religious leader the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who with his
wife presided at the afternoon wedding, urged support for the United
Nations "as a temple of peace" and endorsed its recent calls
for religions to work with the international body to solve global
problems. "Religions
are the internal center of world civilization, but the family is the
actual axis on which religions exist," said Rev. Moon, whose
Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace (IIFWP)
co- sponsored the convocation, which ends tomorrow. "As
a training ground to develop and nurture an individual's character,
the family is far more important than the school or the government,"
Rev. Moon said. Last
year, the U.N. leadership had proposed more cooperation with religious
leaders and NGOs, or nongovernmental organizations. A summit of
NGO directors was one of the convocation events last night. One
of the 20 forums held over the four days included a session at which
representatives from island, peninsula and continental nations discussed
how geography has influenced the rise of their civilizations or cultures. The
convocation met for only one day in the U.N. conference hall.
It was sponsored by missions from seven countries, including Comoro
Islands and Indonesia, and by the Islamic Conference to the United Nations. The
wedding group was made up of mostly young couples, some of whom had
interracial or crossnational marriages, which speakers at another convocation
forum said would promote good will among nations. Such
"international families naturally foster profound levels of tolerance,
which is the secret for successful dialogue among civilizations,"
said the Rev. C.H. Kwak, chairman of a larger event, the
World Culture and Sports Festival 2001, that coincided with the U.N.
activities. The
wedding was a religious ceremony and the couples must still obtain marriage
certificates according to their national laws. Other
sessions - featuring scholars, diplomats and NGO leaders - focused on
the "dialogue of civilizations" in terms of peacemaking, academic
exchange, promotion of democracy, environmental concerns, values, the
role of women, science and education. |