L. Tom Perry was key Mormon leader
— Mormon leader L. Tom Perry, a member of the faith’s highest governing body, died Saturday of cancer, church spokesman Eric Hawkins said in a statement. He was 92.
Perry was the oldest member of the church’s top 15 leaders and the second-most senior member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, a group modeled after Jesus Christ’s apostles that serves under the church president and his two counselors.
Perry spoke regularly at church conferences and was one of four leaders to meet with President Barack Obama during the president’s recent Utah trip.
Perry was in attendance when Mormon leaders and state lawmakers introduced a landmark bill in March that bars discrimination against gay and transgender
Salt Lake City people while protecting the rights of religious groups and individuals.
Perry was greeted warmly by gay advocates that day. But he drew their rebuke in early April when he spoke at a semiannual church gathering in Salt Lake City about the faith being a leading advocate for traditional families and opposing “counterfeit and alternative lifestyles.”
As a church leader, Perry became known for his affability and optimism and for being unpretentious, said Matthew Bowman, a history professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He asked that people call him Tom rather than Elder Perry, Bowman said.
Richard Bushman, a Mormon historian and emeritus professor at Columbia University, recalled Perry’s big grin and booming voice.
One of Perry’s most wellknown quotes came during the 1998 semiannual church conference, when he said: “The almost universal gift everyone can develop is the creation of a pleasant disposition, an even temperament.”
A replacement will be chosen by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints President Thomas S. Monson, considered the religion’s prophet. Members of the faith believe that those decisions are guided by inspiration from God.
Some past quorum members have been moved up from another governing body, the Quorum of the Seventy, while others have come from leadership posts at church-run universities.