A court in Japan has made a major decision regarding Unification Church, which officially call itself Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.
As reported by Associated Press, on Tuesday, March 25, 2025, the church was ordered dissolved after a government request, following the investigation of 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The dissolution could revoke church's legal status, which it gained in 1960's during an anti-communist movement supported by Abe's grandfather, former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi.
Abe's assassin resented the church and blamed it for his family's financial troubles.
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Additionally, the order followed a request by Japan's Education Ministry in 2023 to dissolve the influential South Korea-based sect, citing manipulative fundraising and recruitment tactics that sowed fear among followers and cause harm to their families.
The Japanese branch church had criticised the request as a serious threat to religious and the human rights of its followers.
According to officials, the church influenced its follower decisions, make them donate beyond their financial ability and use manipulative tactics, putting them and their family in danger.
The Unification Church was founded in 1954, Seoul, a year after the end of the Korean War by the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the self-proclaimed messiah, who preached conservative family oriented value system.
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Experts say Japanese followers are asked to pay for their ancestors sins that they committed during Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula and that the majority of the church's worldwide funding comes from Japan.
