The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has announced an April 9 groundbreaking date for the Bahía Blanca Argentina Temple.

In addition to the groundbreaking announcement, the Church released a site location and exterior rendering for what will be the Church’s fifth temple in the South American nation.

Elder Joaquin E. Costa — a General Authority Seventy, the second counselor in the Church’s South America South Area presidency and a native of Concordia, Argentina — will preside at the Saturday, April 9, event. Attendance will be by invitation only.

President Russell M. Nelson announced a temple for Bahía Blanca, Argentina, as one of eight locations identified during the April 2020 general conference.

Plans call for a single-story temple of about 19,000 square feet to be built on an 8.14-acre site at Aldea Romana over Cabrera Avenue. A 25,000-square-foot ancillary building also will be built on the site, providing patron housing and a distribution center.

Site location of the Bahía Blanca Argentina Temple.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The country’s first temple — the Buenos Aires Argentina Temple — was dedicated in 1986, with the second coming nearly three decades later with the 2015 dedication of the Córdoba Argentina Temple.

Two more are currently under construction — the Salta Argentina Temple, with its November 2021 groundbreaking, and the Mendoza Argentina Temple and its groundbreaking ceremony held a month later.

More than 470,000 Latter-day Saints in some 735 congregations reside in the southern South American country.