Some 7,200 South Korean and foreign couples exchanged or reaffirmed marriage vows Sunday in the Unification Church‘s second mass wedding this year.

Critics say the mass weddings prove the church is a cult that brainwashes its followers.

Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon is regaining control of the Washington Times after allies of the South Korean cult leader agreed to acquire the paper for just $1 and assumption of most if its debts, according to an internal memo.

The memo contradicts rumors that a feud among the Moon’s sons over control of the Washington Times prompted the father to buy it back for tens of millions of dollars.

The deal is financially similar to the one the Washington Post cut in selling its money-losing Newsweek to businessman Sidney Harmon.

Paul Bedard details the deal — and the internal feuding in the Moon family — in U.S. News & World Report. Mind you, he also writes that Moon “started the newspaper in 1982 as a conservative and Christian voice in Washington.” Theologians know that the Unification Church is, at best, a cult of Christianity. As such, it is impossible for the paper to provide a “Christian voice.”

With cult leader Sun Myung Moon turning 90 in February, how the movement will survive beyond him is unclear. Moon’s children are at odds over how to run the church’s business empire.

Some second-generation Unification Church members are now looking for a less-radical version of their faith.

Nearly a half-century after the Rev. Sun Myung Moon performed his first mass wedding, the 89-year-old leader of the Unification Church is getting ready to marry off tens of thousands of people in spectacles from the United States to South Korea.

Critics who accuse the church of engaging in cultlike practices say the mass weddings prove it brainwashes its followers.

The Rev Sun Myung Moon, now approaching 90 and still one of the world’s most controversial religious figures, is handing over day-to-day control of his Unification Church to his sons.

Critics maintain the Rev Moon is little more than a charismatic cult leader who brainwashes followers.

Still, some analysts say that by anointing a new generation, Moon may ensure the church endures after his death.

Hundreds of peasants from a town in western Paraguay on Tuesday blocked the national highway that runs to Argentina and Bolivia to demand the distribution of land donated by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church.

The protest is the latest in a series staged by peasants from the Puerto Casado region in recent years against Victoria S.A., a company owned by the Moon cult.

South Korean sect leader Sun Myung Moon was among seven people reported injured when their helicopter burst into flames after an emergency landing north of Seoul Saturday.

Moon, 88-year-old founder of the so-called Unification Church, was taken to a nearby hospital owned by his movement, as were the other injured including Moon’s wife Han Hak Ja, Yonhap news agency said.