On Saturday, May 17, ground was broken for the Natal Brazil Temple, to be the 15th house of the Lord dedicated in Brazil and the first in the state of Rio Grande do Norte. It’s one of 24 temples operating, under construction or announced in the country.
Elder Mark D. Eddy — a General Authority Seventy and second counselor in the Brazil Area presidency — presided over the Natal temple groundbreaking ceremony and dedicated the site for construction. Elder Luciano Sankari, an Area Seventy from Curitiba, Brazil, was also in attendance.
Held in the Brazilian city that means “Christmas,” the invitation-only event brought in approximately 500 people, with others watching the broadcast on YouTube. Information about the groundbreaking was first published Tuesday, May 20, in a news release on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
Elder Eddy said in his remarks, “We thank the leaders of the Church in this region for their leadership and faith, and all the members and missionaries who worked to establish The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Natal.”
In his dedicatory prayer on the site, he noted the role of personal preparation as local Saints anticipate this house of the Lord.
“On this groundbreaking day, we recognize the need to prepare ourselves to enter the house of the Lord that will be dedicated here,” prayed Elder Eddy. “We humbly plead with Thee to increase our desire to be personally prepared to receive this temple.”
Also speaking at the event was Antonio Carlos Bastos Ferreira — a pioneer of the Church in the region and the patriarch of the Natal Brazil Stake. He recalled that “in July 1978, at my father’s house, with just a few brothers and sisters, [Brazil Rio de Janeiro Mission] President Max L. Shirts dedicated the Natal area for the preaching of the gospel in Rio Grande do Norte.”
He added: “Here today begins the greatest spiritual transformation this city has ever seen.”
About the Church in Brazil
President Russell M. Nelson announced a temple for Natal on April 2, 2023, during April 2023 general conference. It was one of 15 locations that he identified at the close of the Sunday afternoon session.
Planned as a single-story building of approximately 19,800 square feet, the Natal Brazil Temple is being built on a 5.53-acre site at Av. Senador Salgado Filho (BR-101). It will stand in the Nova Parnamirim neighborhood in the Natal suburb of Parnamirim, in Brazil’s easternmost coastal state of Rio Grande do Norte.
Of Brazil’s 24 total temples dedicated, under construction or announced, the most recently dedicated is the Salvador Brazil Temple on Oct. 20, 2024. Other dedicated and operating temples are located in Belém, Brasília, Campinas, Curitiba, Fortaleza, Manaus, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
In addition to the Natal temple, three other houses of the Lord are under construction in Brazil: Belo Horizonte, Londrina and Ribeirão Preto.
Nine houses of the Lord are in planning and design stages in Brazil: Campo Grande, Florianópolis, Goiânia, João Pessoa, Maceió, Santos, São Paulo East, Teresina and Vitória.
Latter-day Saint missionaries began preaching in southern Brazil in 1928. By the time the São Paulo Brazil Temple — the first in South America — was dedicated in 1978, membership in the country had reached 54,000.
Today, Brazil has 37 missions and is home to more than 1.5 million Latter-day Saints in nearly 2,100 congregations.
