Newsgroup: it.cultura.religioni
Titolo: U.N. mass wedding celebrates family

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.
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