Reiner Vincenz

Reiner Vincenz was born in the rubble of postwar Germany, a child of the communist East who carried, even as a boy, a small teddy bear given to him by an uncle when there was little else to be had. He grew up only a few years after the Second World War, and into that bleak landscape came the late Peter Koch, who witnessed to him about the Divine Principle and brought him into his first realization that he was living in a time of immense fortune in the providence of God. From those earliest days he became, in the words of those who knew him, a column of faith for the entire movement, a first European fruit born of love.

When the call came to pioneer France, everyone around him objected, convinced the young German would lose his faith within three months. Reiner wrote directly to True Father, who answered that it was very good if he could go, and Reiner would later say that day, "the only person who really understands me is True Father." He crossed into France without a single word of the language, carrying a heart for unity between Germany and France that he believed essential for Europe. He was willing to endure twenty-one years to find his first spiritual child; it took three, won at the price of fasts so severe he once collapsed unconscious for two days and was revived only by the prayers of True Parents and the entire Korean church.

In seven years he dominated the complexities of a country General de Gaulle had despaired of governing, gathering more than one hundred members who would accompany him and his wife Barbara to America. To his French children he gave a theology of spiritual warfare in plain language: the criminal is Satan, and the criminal fears nothing so much as exposure. Be humble, sacrifice, and serve, he said, because Satan cannot do these things, and he will leave you to find someone else. He had miraculous experiences of his own, among them Joan of Arc speaking to him from the pulpit of her church in Paris.

True Father trusted him with the hardest assignments. "If there is a difficult task," Father told Bohi Park, "I give it to Reiner Vincenz. He will do it." He led the Day of Hope tours, commanded the International One World Crusade through America, Japan, and Korea, fasted three days to win the unity that secured the Chicago victory, and carried the IOWC into the Yoido rally where a sea of white-clad Koreans filled the plaza. Afterwards he led the movement in Germany and gave his strength to the home-church providence in the United Kingdom.

In his last years Parkinson's took his voice and his movement, yet he wrote to struggling brothers and sisters almost daily, three times a day, urging them to keep fighting on. He died in Chicago, the city of his greatest victory, with a small teddy bear named Toldy still resting in his hand. True Mother, hearing the news in Hawaii, designated his Seonghwa a world-level ceremony.

He leaves his wife Barbara, daughter Lena, and son-in-law Giorgio to inherit a single, unwavering refrain. Marching on. Marching on. Marching on.