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The Unification Church is
for holding the
weddings. It was founded in 1954 by self-declared messiah Sun Myung Moon. The communal weddings started in 1961 and have seen hundreds of
of couples walk down the
. In many cases, the bride and
had been matched and met for the first time at the ceremony. One
spoke about marrying amid the global spread of the coronavirus. He told the Reuters news agency: "I'm very happy to attend this
blessed joint wedding. Since coronavirus is going around
days, I wore a mask to be on the safe
." A 23-year-old bride from Benin said: "I didn't put on a mask because I wanted to be
for my husband."
