Angel Moroni is back on top of the Salt Lake LDS Temple. See photos, video.

The golden Angel Moroni statue, freshly repaired and restored, is back on top of the iconic Salt Lake Temple.

Crews returned the treasured religious symbol — with its horn in hand — back to its rightful 210-foot perch Tuesday morning after an earthquake damaged it in 2020.

The removal in May of that year was part of the temple’s planned renovation and seismic upgrade, but the quake “sped up the process,” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said at the time, after the 5.7 magnitude temblor “shook the trumpet out of Moroni’s right hand and caused other minor damage.”

Sculpted by Cyrus E. Dallin, who was not a Latter-day Saint, the figure, weighing thousands of pounds, was hammered out of copper and covered with 22-karat gold leaf.

Emily Utt, a historic sites curator for the church, was among a small coterie of Latter-day Saints gathered to witness Tuesday’s return of the statue. She quoted Dallin as saying the process “brought me nearer to God than anything I ever did. It seemed to me that I came to know what it means to commune with angels from heaven.”

Dallin recognized “that God speaks to his children,” Utt said in a news release. “His angel atop the temple reminds us that the heavens are open, and we can return to him.”

Also present at the small gathering on Temple Square were Larry Y. Wilson, an emeritus general authority Seventy who is a descendant of Brigham Young, and Mark Woodruff, a descendant of Wilford Woodruff and executive secretary to current President Russell M. Nelson.

Young directed the church when work on the Salt Lake Temple began, Wilson said, and then chose Woodruff to be the faith’s first temple president.

“Together, they organized the work of temple covenants in St. George,” Wilson said. “Young’s action in following [church founder] Joseph Smith’s instruction to organize the temple ceremonies is an example of how revelation so often works. It’s line upon line and precept upon precept — a continually unfolding process.”

Wilford Woodruff, who eventually rose to church president and dedicated the six-spired landmark in the heart of Salt Lake City in 1893, “knew the work would continue to be perfected over time,” Mark Woodruff told onlookers. “He also knew that families are central to God’s plan for his children and needed to be connected for eternity through sealing ordinances that take place in the temple.”

Most of the church’s temples across the globe have Angel Moroni statues. But more and more of its newer temples are being built without them.

Latter-day Saints believe that Moroni, the final prophet from ancient America in the Book of Mormon, visited Joseph Smith in a vision and told him where to find gold plates that yielded the faith’s signature text.

Angel Moroni, as he was known, became the symbol of the “restoration” of Christ’s gospel, the harbinger with his horn sounding a clarion call of the last days.

At last word, the full renovation of the temple and the surrounding square is expected to wrap up in 2026. A public open house will allow the general public to enter the temple, a worldwide symbol of the 17 million-member faith, for the first time in more than 130 years.