The former Taoiseach, Mr Albert Reynolds, may feature in the next promotional video for the Rev Sun Myung Moon, as a result of his involvement in the conference in Washington organised by the Unification Movement. A video of a similar conference held in Washington last year was shown to a small group of followers of the Rev Moon who met in a Dublin hotel at the weekend. The meeting was held to mark the three-day Washington conference during which 30,000 couples gathered in a stadium to renew their marriage vows.
"The event in the US is over and everything went perfectly," Mr Tom Molloy told the group of about 30. He said that 200 heads of state participated in "a very intimate event" renewing their marriage vows, and that he assumed Mr Reynolds was also present for that part of the festivities.
The Washington event was organised by the Family Federation for World Peace (FFWP), one of the organisations in the Unification Movement headed by the Rev Moon, who professes to be the Second Coming.
Mr Reynolds was a guest at the Washington conference entitled the World Culture and Sports Festival III. It is not known if he participated in the renewal-of-marriage-vows ceremony, as claimed by Mr Molloy, president of the FFWP in Ireland.
Satellite link-ups around the world allowed 3.6 million couples take part in the renewal of vows, according to the FFWP. However, the group in Jury's Hotel could not afford a link-up and instead marked the event with a meeting which included a talk on "Marriage and Family Values" and a video of the "inaugural world convention" of the FFWP in Washington in 1996.
This video, called Global Implications of Family Values in the 21st Century, showed footage of a number of former heads of state at the convention, including US presidents, Mr George Bush and Mr Gerald Ford, and former British prime minister Sir Edward Heath. The Nobel Peace Prize winner, Ms Betty Williams, was also shown in attendance. However, the only lengthy footage was of speeches delivered by Rev Moon and his wife, Mrs Sun Myung Moon.
The emphasis of the video was that the institution of the family needed to be strengthened if the world was going to successfully confront the challenges of the next century. Mr Molloy in his address in Jury's spoke out against the permissiveness of the Western world. This permissiveness and corruption would destroy it, he said.