Latin, Asian apostles make Mormon history
SALT LAKE CITY >> The Mormon church made history and injected some diversity into a previously all-white top leadership panel on Saturday by selecting the firstever Latin-American apostle and the first-ever apostle of Asian ancestry.
The selections of Gerrit W. Gong, a Chinese-American with Bay Area roots, and Ulisses Soares of Brazil were announced during a twice-annual conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City. The choices triggered excitement among a contingent of Mormons who for years have been hoping for the faith’s top leadership to be more representative of a religion that has more than half of the its 16 million members outside the United States.
“It’s a sign that the church is for everyone,” said Guilherme De Castro, a 37-yearold
Mormon from Brazil who was in attendance for the announcement. “It doesn’t matter where you are from or the way you look.”
The 64-year-old Gong was born in Redwood City. An expert on Asia, and particularly China, he worked for the U.S. State Department, the U.S. ambassador in Beijing, the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic
and International Studies and Brigham Young University, where he was a political science professor, before being selected for the lower-tier church leadership panel.
The 59-year-old Soares was an accountant and auditor for multinational corporations in Brazil before joining church leadership, according to a church biography. He was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
The selections come during a two-day conference happening as the faith grapples with heightened scrutiny about its handling of sexual abuse reports and one-on-one interviews between local lay leaders and youth. Mormon leaders hadn’t spoken about the topic as of Saturday afternoon, but a person in attendance yelled several times, “Stop protecting sexual predators,” as new people were announced to second-tier leadership posts.
The outburst came one day after about 1,000 current and former Mormons marched to the church’s headquarters in Salt Lake City, delivering petitions demanding an end to closed door, one-on-one interviews between youth and lay leaders where sexual questions sometimes arise.
The church changed policy this week to now allow children to bring a parent or adult with them to the interviews, but protesters said that doesn’t go far enough to keep children safe. The change came as part of more revisions to sexual abuse reporting guidelines following recent revelations that a former prominent missionary leader was accused of sexually assaulting two women in the 1980s. The ex-leader denied the allegations.
It was the first conference presided over by new church President Russell M. Nelson. His choices for the two open leadership spots sparked hope that the 93-year-old former heart surgeon will focus on the globalization of the faith during his tenure. He is set to embark on a trip in April to visit eight cities in Europe, Africa and Asia, including Hong Kong.
The choices mark the strongest statement in favor of global diversity by senior church leadership since 1978 when the church lifted a ban on black men in the lay clergy, allowing the church to spread to Brazil, Africa and elsewhere, said Mormon scholar Patrick Mason, associate professor of religion at Claremont Graduate University in California. He said most people were hoping for at best one new non-white leader, so the double selection will be welcomed with enthusiasm throughout the religion.
The announcement sparked a wave of tweets and other social media posts, some by Mormons who said they never thought they would see the day.
Soares and Gong join a panel called the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles that, before Saturday, was made up entirely of white men from the U.S. with the exception of one German, Dieter Uchtdorf.
The all-male panel sits below President Nelson and his two counselors and helps set church policy and oversees the faith’s business interests.