News Alert

Omaha World Herald,6/24/2004: Washington—More than a dozen law-makers attended a congressional reception this year honoring the Rev. Sun Myung Moon where he declared himself the Messiah and said his teachings have helped Hitler and Stalin be “reborn as new persons.”

At the March 23 ceremony in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., wore white gloves and carried a pillow holding an ornate crown that was placed on Moon’s head. The Korean-born businessman and religious leader then delivered a long speech saying he was “sent to earth…to save the world’s six billion people….Emperors, kings and presidents…have declared to all Heaven and Earth the Rev. Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity’s Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent.”

Moon, 85, has been controversial. Renowned for officiating at mass weddings, he received an 18-month prison sentence in 1982 for tax fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Among the more than 300 people who attended all or part of the ceremony was Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., who now says he was honoring a constituent receiving a peace award and did not know Moon would be there.

The event’s organizers flew in nearly 100 honorees from all 50 states to receive state and national peace awards. The only “international crown of peace awards” went to Moon and his wife.

JESUS ACTOR MISTAKEN FOR THE REAL DEAL(www.ananova.com, 7/6/04): James Caviezel has been swamped with requests to perform miracles by Mexican fans who believe he really is Jesus Christ.

The 35-year-old actor, who played Jesus in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, was on a one-week tour of the east Mexican state of Veracruz. According to Mexican newspaper “Reforma,” dozens of residents from villages throughout the state, one of the poorest in the country, asked Caviezel to heal the sick and perform other miracles as he passed through.

The actor, who is himself a strict Catholic, said: “The belief of these people really moved me. It was a shock for me to see how they came up to me to ask for my help. I had to explain to them that I was only an actor, and wasn’t really the son of God.”

Mexico has the biggest population of Catholics in the world after Brazil and has been visited by the Pope five times.

[“For all of the ‘missions-oriented’ enthusiasm generated by evangelical leaders for The Passion of the Christ, they have disregarded the reality that the movie does nothing to dissuade Catholics from their Church’s false gospel that can save no one.”—T.A. McMahon]