Jeffrey R. Holland, 85, has become the next leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has been a member of the church’s governing body since 1994.
Jeffrey R. Holland, the next leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, died on December 27 at the age of 85 from complications related to kidney disease, the church announced.
Holland was a member of the faith’s governing body, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Holland, who has long been a central figure in the church’s education network, gained national attention in 2021 when he instructed staff and faculty at Brigham Young University, the church’s flagship higher education institution, to take up a metaphorical “musket” to defend “marriage as the union of a man and a woman.”
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is also commonly known as the Mormon Church.
Born in St. George, Utah, in 1940, Holland says he grew up in an idyllic small-town setting. “If he had wanted to, he wouldn’t have gotten into trouble in that town,” Church said. “My mother would have found out before I got home.”
After serving the Church as a missionary in England as a teenager, he earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in American studies from Yale University, and then began a career in the church education system. He served as president of Brigham Young from 1980 to 1989 and oversaw construction of the school’s Jerusalem Center on Mount Scopus. He became a member of the Apostles in 1994.
Holland’s 2021 speech drew protests from inside and outside the church, but his uncompromising opposition to same-sex marriage was supported by the university, which recently made the speech required reading. Holland said on a podcast last year that he was sad, if not exactly sorry, that his words had upset some people.
“If anyone was hurt, and I know there were some people in that interaction, then I was hurt,” he said. “For the past three years, I’ve been crying.”
Holland was predeceased by his wife, Patricia Terry, who died in 2023, and is survived by the couple’s three children, 13 grandchildren and several great-grandchildren, the church said in a statement.
(Reporting by Raphael Sutter and Jasper Ward in Washington; Editing by Sergio Nonn and Chizu Nomiyama)
