British man picked for top Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints body

SALT LAKE CITY — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced that a man raised in England who converted to the faith as an adult will be the newest member of its top governing body, filling a vacancy created when a member died last month.

Patrick Kearon, 62, becomes the first new member since 2018 named to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who serve lifetime appointments helping to oversee the business interests and global development of the faith known widely as the Mormon church. Quorum members are under the church president and his two top counselors, and all 15 of those leaders are men in accordance with the all-male priesthood.

“This sacred call is so very daunting and humbling to me,” Kearon said in a statement.

Kearon’s selection was not unexpected, said Mormon scholar Matthew Bowman, who called the new apostle a rising star widely beloved among the faithful. It’s rare, however, for the president to select an apostle who converted rather than someone whose family has been in the church for generations, he said.

Most members of the Quorum have been on a leadership track for most of their lives, “and that means then that people who join the church as adults tend to not get on that conveyor belt,” said Bowman, a religion professor at Claremont Graduate Universities. The church has also historically given preference to senior leaders who served missions — which Kearon missed due to joining later in life.

Like most new appointees, Kearon served as the senior president of a middle-tier leadership council called the Presidency of the Seventy, often a stepping stone to higher office. He is well known for his 2016 speech urging compassion for refugees fleeing war-torn parts of the Middle East and Africa.

Kearon was born in the city of Carlisle in the Cumbria area of northwest England and was raised in the United Kingdom and the Middle East, according to his church biography.