SALT LAKE CITY — Mormonism’s home is America, but most of its believers don’t live here anymore. In the past 13 years the church has flourished as never before around the world, with new temples rising in Africa and South America and new members joining by the tens of thousands.
The expansion is a testament to the tireless work of Gordon B. Hinckley, the church’s president and a sort of spiritual pioneer who traveled as no Mormon leader had before to raise the church’s profile. He died Sunday at age 97.
Claudio Zivic, who oversees church affairs in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, recalled a Hinckley address to a crowd of 50,000 in Buenos Aires in 1996.
“We know that all the prophets are very special for us. But he touched our lives in every possible way,” Zivic said from Buenos Aires. “He has taught us to be a little better, to stand a little taller and to do what is right.”
The sense of loss among the Mormon faithful was more than evident. Dozens of mourners gathered outside church headquarters to honor Hinckley. College students sang hymns by the light of cellphones.
Kelly Ford, 28, of Kaysville stared at a painting of Hinckley in the church visitor’s center as a snowstorm swirled outside. She recalled how he had taken time to speak to teenagers.
“He was a complete optimist. He talked about our potential and what the Lord expects of us,” Ford said. “He was the greatest optimist I’ve ever known.”
Republican Mitt Romney — whose bid to become the first Mormon elected president also raised the profile of the church — said Monday that he would miss the humility and wisdom of Hinckley and plans to attend his funeral.
The church began in 1830 with just six members, and by the end of Hinckley’s tenure it had crossed the threshold of 13 million.
About 5.7 million — less than half the church’s worldwide membership — are in the United States, and a third of them live in Utah. While the church is among the fastest growing in the U.S., membership is rising more rapidly overseas, primarily in Africa and Latin America.
Mormons have always been missionaries, but the first major international effort to increase church membership was in the late 1830s, when missionaries were sent to England, drawing more than 1,000 converts back to the United States. From there the work spread to Denmark and other part of Western Europe.
In a statement Monday, President Bush praised Hinckley as a “deeply patriotic man.”
“While serving for over seven decades in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Gordon demonstrated the heart of a servant and the wisdom of a leader,” Bush said. “He was a tireless worker and a talented communicator who was respected in his community and beloved by his congregation.”
Rick Phillips, a sociology professor at the University of North Florida who has studied church growth, gives Hinckley most of the credit for the church’s recent expansion.
Hinckley’s commitment to temple expansion and focused missionary work has given the church unprecedented resources, Phillips said.
In 2006, the church said 94,000 new members were children born into the faith and 272,845 were converted worldwide. In 2006, the church scattered more than 53,000 missionaries around the world.
Hinckley funeral plans
Saturday: 11 a.m.
Site: LDS Conference Center, Salt Lake City; the Mormon Tabernacle is not expected to accommodate the anticipated crowd
Burial: Salt Lake Cemetery, beside his wife of 67 years, Marjorie Pay, immediately following
Public viewing: 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Thursday and Friday, LDS Church Administration Building
Broadcast: Via satellite in 69 languages and on the Internet
The Salt Lake Tribune
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Man known for folksy humor man take up reins
SALT LAKE CITY — If leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints hold with tradition, the next president of the church will be a soft-spoken World War II veteran with a love for telling stories.
Succession to the presidency is historically based on seniority, and Thomas S. Monson, 80, is in line to succeed Gordon B. Hinckley as leader of the 13 million-member church.
Church presidents serve for life. The title usually passes to the senior-most member of the Quorum of the Twelve apostles when a president dies.
Like Hinckley, Monson was one of the youngest men ever called to the highest levels of church leadership when named a church apostle in 1963 at age 36. Before that he spent three years in Toronto, overseeing church missionary work.
Monson is known among Latter-day Saints for his folksy humor, delivered in speeches and parable-like stories during the twice-yearly church conferences in Salt Lake City that draw tens of thousands of people.
He’s also known for his ministerial concern for widows and the infirm.
“He’s affable, open and approachable,” Ed Firmage, a former Mormon and an emeritus professor of law at the University of Utah, said last year. “He’s just a very good man.”
A 1948 cum laude graduate of the University of Utah, Monson holds a master’s degree in business administration from the church-owned Brigham Young University in Provo.
His professional life has included stints in newspaper advertising for the church-owned Deseret Morning News and as general manager of the Deseret News Press, one of the West’s largest commercial printing companies.
