President Dallin H. Oaks of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will dedicate the Belo Horizonte Brazil Temple on Sunday, Aug. 16, just four days after celebrating his 94th birthday.
He becomes the first Church President to dedicate a temple outside the Utah/Idaho area of the United States in more than seven years and the first Church President to dedicate a house of the Lord in Brazil in nearly two decades.
And it’s not just a “temple” first for President Oaks. The dedication visit will be his first international ministry as President of the Church and the first travel by the Church’s top leader outside the United States since the late President Russell M. Nelson’s November 2019 ministry in Southeast Asia, just months prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
President Oaks’ presiding at the Belo Horizonte dedication was announced Tuesday, Aug. 11, on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
The Belo Horizonte temple dedication will be the first of two such events for new houses of the Lord on Sunday, Aug. 16. Later that morning, Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles will dedicate the Cleveland Ohio Temple.
The two temples — Belo Horizonte and Cleveland — will be the Church’s 220th and 221st dedicated houses of the Lord worldwide, respectively.
President Oaks and temple dedications
The Belo Horizonte dedication will be the second that President Oaks has presided over since being first set apart and then formally announced as Church President on Oct. 14, 2025. He dedicated the Burley Idaho Temple on Jan. 11 of this year.
As first counselor in the First Presidency, President Oaks dedicated three temples — the Barranquilla Colombia Temple on Dec. 9, 2018; the Richmond Virginia Temple on May 7, 2023; and the Urdaneta Philippines Temple on April 28, 2024.
And on March 20, 2016, he dedicated the Provo City Center Temple as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, making the Belo Horizonte dedication the sixth total he has presided over.
The last time a Church President dedicated a temple other than one in the states of Utah and Idaho was the March 10-12, 2019, dedication of the Rome Italy Temple by President Nelson, who was also 94 at the time. Over those three days in Rome, all members of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles participated in the dedicatory sessions.
During his 7½ years as President of the Church, President Nelson dedicated four temples:
- The Concepción Chile Temple on Oct. 28, 2018, in the first year of his administration.
- The aforementioned Rome temple in 2019.
- The Deseret Peak Utah Temple on Nov. 10, 2024, with that house of the Lord being the Church’s 200th dedicated temple.
- The Syracuse Utah Temple on June 8, 2025, when he was 100 years old.
And as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, he dedicated the Sapporo Japan Temple in 2016.
Also, President Nelson announced the Belo Horizonte Brazil Temple during the Church’s April 2021 general conference, one of 20 new sites he identified at the time and one of the 200 total new temples he announced during his administration.
Continued pattern of Apostles dedicating most temples
So far in the first 10 months of President Oaks’ leading the Church of Jesus Christ, 10 new houses of the Lord have been dedicated — in five U.S. states and in three other countries, including three in the Philippines.
President Oaks has continued President Nelson’s pattern of having the majority of temple dedications being presided over by a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Temples through the 1800s and on to 1999 were dedicated by the President of the Church at the time or one of his counselors in the First Presidency. The first dedication done by a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles came in 1999, when plane problems forced President Gordon B. Hinckley to miss a scheduled temple dedication in Canada, with President Boyd K. Packer, acting president of the quorum, stepping in to dedicate the Regina Saskatchewan Temple.
During the 2008-2018 administration of President Thomas S. Monson, 32 of the 35 dedications of houses of the Lord were done by President Monson or one of his First Presidency counselors, President Henry B. Eyring or President Dieter F. Uchtdorf. By comparison, from 2018 until mid-October 2025, President Nelson had Apostles dedicate 40 temples, with First Presidency members doing the remaining eight.
Of the 10 temple dedications in the past 10 months, three have been done by a member of the First Presidency and seven by an Apostle. Those totals will jump to four and eight following the two Aug. 16 dedications.
After those two dedications, 11 more new houses of the Lord already are scheduled to be dedicated through the first of 2028 — nine to be done by various Apostles, one by President D. Todd Christofferson of the First Presidency and one yet to be announced.
Temples in Brazil
The Belo Horizonte Brazil Temple is one of the Church’s 24 total houses of the Lord in Brazil, home to more than 1.5 million Latter-day Saints in over 2,000 wards and branches. That count of 24 temples is more than any other country in the world besides the United States (156) and Mexico (27). Rounding out the top five of countries with the most temples are the Philippines (14) and Canada (11).
The Belo Horizonte temple will be Brazil’s 12th dedicated temple. The São Paulo Brazil Temple was not only the country’s first house of the Lord when dedicated in 1978 but also the first in all of South America.
Brazil’s 10 other dedicated temples are in Recife, Porto Alegre, Campinas, Curitiba, Manaus, Fortaleza, Rio de Janeiro, Belém, Brasília and Salvador.
The country has six temples under construction, all having been started during the past two years — in Ribeirão Preto, Londrina, Natal, João Pessoa, Teresina and Santos, the last beginning construction earlier this month. A seventh temple — in Maceió — has its groundbreaking scheduled for Oct. 10.
Brazil’s five final temples are announced and in planning, each with a released site and projected size of the structure — São Paulo East, Vitória, Florianópolis, Goiânia and Campo Grande.
A closer look at Brazil temple dedications
Brazil’s first five temples were dedicated by Church presidents over a span of three decades, with President Hinckley presiding at three of those dedications:
- São Paulo, Oct. 30, 1978, by President Spencer W. Kimball.
- Recife, Dec. 15, 2000, by President Hinckley.
- Porto Alegre, Dec. 17, 2000, by President Hinckley.
- Campinas, May 17, 2002, by President Hinckley.
- Curitiba, June 1, 2008, by President Monson.
Of note: Similar to President Oaks, the second houses of the Lord that President Kimball and President Monson both dedicated as Church Presidents were the ones they dedicated in Brazil. President Kimball first dedicated the Washington D.C. Temple in late 1974 before the São Paulo temple four years later. President Monson first dedicated the Rexburg Idaho Temple earlier in 2008; as a counselor in the First Presidency, he had presided at the dedications of six houses of the Lord in 2000.
The five temples dedicated in the past 14 years have been done by members of the First Presidency or the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles:
- Manaus, June 10, 2012, by President Uchtdorf, then a First Presidency counselor.
- Fortaleza, June 2, 2019, by Elder Ulisses Soares of the Twelve.
- Rio de Janeiro, May 8, 2022, by Elder Gary E. Stevenson of the Twelve.
- Belém, Nov. 20, 2022, by Elder Dale G. Renlund of the Twelve.
- Brasília, Sept. 17, 2023, by Elder Neil L. Andersen of the Twelve.
- Salvador, Oct. 20, 2024, by Elder Andersen.
