SALT LAKE CITY -- The Mormon church has chosen three new members for a top governing body that sets policy and runs the faith's business operations. All are from Utah.
The new members of the religion's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles were all serving in lower-level church leadership positions and had held executive posts previously in the private sector.
Ronald Rasband is a former CEO of a chemical corporation. Gary Stevenson was the co-founder and president of an exercise equipment manufacturing company. Dale Renlund was a cardiologist and directed a cardiac transplant program.
Their appointments -- announced Saturday at a church conference in Salt Lake City -- surprised many outside religious scholars who speculated that the Utah-based faith would choose at least one new member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles from a country outside the U.S., perhaps from Latin America or Africa.
Though all three men have distinguished records in church leadership and in their private careers, some Latter-day Saints will be disappointed that the church didn't pick a minority or someone from outside the U.S., Mason said.
But Mason pointed out that Renlund and Stevenson have held major leadership positions with the church in foreign countries -- Renlund in Africa and Stevenson in Japan.
"That suggests that they care about finding leaders with international experience, but don't feel like the leaders must themselves come from outside the U.S.," Mason said.
Matthew Bowman, associate professor of history at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, said he was surprised the church didn't select somebody from the Southern Hemisphere.
But he said he still thinks that will eventually happen.
The announcements marked a rare moment in church history.
It had been six years since a new quorum member was chosen, and more than a decade since the leadership council had two openings.
The last time there were three was in 1906.
The new members of the quorum are the 98th, 99th and 100th members of the governing body. They are to give speeches at a church conference this morning.
Modeled after Jesus Christ's apostles, the group serves under the church president and his two counselors.
The new appointees start as junior members, but they could someday become church president. The group's longest-tenured member ascends to president when the current one dies.
Rasband, 64, of Salt Lake City will enter the quorum with seniority over the other two because he was the first to be informed of his selection last week, church officials said in a news release.
After the names were announced to about 20,000 Mormons in attendance and millions more watching on live broadcasts, the three new leaders spoke briefly and answered a few questions at a news conference.
They said they were each informed of their "callings" separately on Tuesday in meetings with church President Thomas Monson.
Stevenson called it a "knee-buckling" experience. Renlund said he was so shocked he could only murmur an acceptance as he struggled to maintain his composure.
"I was somewhere between apoplectic and catatonic," said Renlund. Rasband fought back tears as talked about the magnitude of being chosen to help lead a religion his family has belonged to for six generations.
None of them were told who the two other choices were, having to wait like everyone else until Saturday.
Their extended families didn't know, either. Their children, their spouses and grandchildren hugged and cried when they saw them for the first time after the news conference.
The decisions were made by Monson. Though Monson didn't speak at the news conference, church spokesman Michael Otterson described the selection process as a "profoundly sobering and deeply spiritual" experience. He said other members of the quorum were invited to suggest names, but there was no lobbying, advocacy, debate or argument -- with Monson settling on the choices after much prayer and contemplation.
Quorum members serve until they die, and three recent deaths created the void.
A Section on 10/04/2015