As the headquarters of the European Union, Belgium is “a gathering place,” said Elder Jack N. Gerard. And during a Nov. 22 ceremony broadcast in five languages, he reinforced this idea of unity before dedicating the site of the Brussels Belgium Temple.
Belgium is “a place where different peoples, cultures and languages are welcome, and collective interests are considered for the betterment of humankind,” said Elder Gerard, a General Authority Seventy and first counselor in the Church’s Europe Central Area presidency.
He added that in Brussels, many of God’s children “from various lands come together in union to find peace, prosperity and understanding in this world.”
In his dedicatory prayer on the Brussels temple site, Elder Gerard pleaded, “We ask Thee to bless it as a place where Thy children, regardless of their culture or language, will find union with Thee through the sacred ordinances of the temple.”
Once the building is completed and dedicated, it will be the country’s first house of the Lord for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The Brussels temple is being built in an existing metropolitan area building, so no groundbreaking or turning of the soil took place. However, group photos were taken of leaders with ceremonial golden shovels of a typical groundbreaking to show a symbolic start to the construction phase.
This ceremony was broadcast in English, French, Dutch, German and Spanish. Information about the event was also published in a Nov. 22 news release on the Church’s Europe Newsroom.
‘A place where we come to commune with God’
Presiding over Saturday’s site dedication ceremony, Elder Gerard highlighted the temple as a place of receiving inspiration through the Holy Ghost.
“We consider it to be a house of learning, a place where we come to commune with God,” he said, “to begin to better understand our divine nature as children of God, our purpose in this life and our purpose for life hereafter.”
When dedicating the temple site and construction process, Elder Gerard prayed for Heavenly Father to “make of it a sacred space where those who enter in will go forth, armed with Thy power, to bear glorious tidings of truth unto the ends of the earth.”
Elder Gerard noted that Brussels has been called the heart of Europe. And in time, local Latter-day Saints will be able to turn their hearts to their ancestors through vicarious ordinances.
About the Church in Belgium
According to site plans, the Brussels temple is to be a multistory structure of approximately 25,500 square feet. It will be constructed within an existing building at Avenue des Arts 52 in Brussels, Belgium. A meetinghouse and arrival facilities for the temple will be built within the building as well.
On April 4, 2021, then-Church President Russell M. Nelson announced the first house of the Lord for Belgium. It was one of 20 temple locations he identified in April 2021 general conference, alongside two others for Europe — in Vienna, Austria, and Oslo, Norway.
The Church’s first missionary in Belgium, Mischa Markow, a convert from Turkey, arrived in 1888. Missionaries laboring in Switzerland and Germany were also soon sent to Belgium.
The Brussels Belgium Stake, the first in Belgium, was organized on Feb. 20, 1977. Today, nearly 7,000 Latter-day Saints reside in Belgium, with two stakes comprising the country’s 12 congregations.
A handful of other Latter-day Saint temples have been built from existing buildings. Like the Brussels temple, the multistory Manhattan New York Temple stands at the corner of a city block; it was built from an existing stake center. The Manhattan temple is currently closed for renovations.
The Vernal Utah Temple was built from an existing tabernacle, and the Copenhagen Denmark Temple was built from a chapel. And the Provo City Center Utah Temple was rebuilt after the historic Provo Tabernacle was destroyed in a fire, giving the site a holy revival.
