The Mormon Land newsletter is The Salt Lake Tribune’s weekly highlight reel of news in and about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Join us on Patreon and receive the full newsletter, podcast transcripts and access to all of our religion content.
Moneymen, er, women
The church’s wealth strategies have to be counted as an eye-popping $uccess.
After all, it holds tens of billions of dollars in its publicly reported reserves, as we’ve diligently reported, and spends hundreds of millions a year on humanitarian aid.
Even so, Exponent II blogger Rose suggests letting women shepherd the church’s finances, especially its relief efforts. Her argument echoes the sentiments of scholar Melissa Inouye.
“We have huge potential to change the world because of the [church’s] financial resources,” Inouye said in a Tribune interview just days before she died. “...We could do so much good if the Relief Society, for example, were in charge of distributing our humanitarian aid and could coordinate those local projects in their areas.”
The women’s organization already leads an initiative to improve the health and nutrition of women and children worldwide. But the Exponent II blogger is calling for a more sweeping shift.
Rose urges the church, for instance, to boost its humanitarian aid to $3 billion (double last year’s $1.45 billion) and let women oversee ward (congregation) budgets.
Among her other ideas:
• Have Relief Society President Camille Johnson and her counselors work with local church units to produce and distribute nutritional supplements to hungry children.
• Allow ward Relief Society leaders to identify humanitarian needs in their areas and then, as Inouye advocated, coordinate with community representatives and other religious officials to find solutions.
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Missionaries perform service in France.
• Unleash full-time proselytizing missionaries in impoverished areas to devote more time to humanitarian service.
• Put women at the helm in ensuring refugees, immigrants, the unsheltered and the sick get the housing, food, clothing and health care they need.
Under female leadership, the blogger states, the church could work to create Zion (with “no poor among them”) and “become a world humanitarian leader.”
“If Jesus were to visit the church,” Rose writes, “he would ask, ‘What have you done to help those in need?’ Not, ‘How many hundreds of billions of dollars have you amassed in the stock market and high-end real estate?’”
The latest ‘Mormon Land’ podcast: The pioneers you never knew
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The sun rises over the Salt Lake Valley at This Is the Place Heritage Park in July 2023.
Little-known adventures and misadventures from the Mormon pioneers’ epic trek west.
Listen to the podcast.
A bonus: Other facts you may not have known about Brigham Young, handcarts and this 19th-century pilgrimage
Church historian goes on trek
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Church Historian and Recorder Elder Kyle S. McKay and his wife, Jennifer, hold hands as they walk with about 150 youths from the Hooper Utah Pioneer Trail Stake on the Wyoming Mormon Trail, trekking roughly 24 miles across the Wyoming landscape July 7-9, 2025.
Meanwhile, Church Historian and Recorder Kyle McKay stepped into the past himself recently with 150 Latter-day Saint youths from northern Utah as they crossed the Wyoming trail trekked by the ill-fated Willie and Martin handcart companies 169 years ago.
“This is the first time we’ve opened up this trek in a decade or so,” McKay said in a news release. “This trail has meant so much to me over the years, and I know the potential that this place has for providing an amazing experience. And so, when we were finally able to open the trail back up, I wanted to be here. … This trail whispers. And there are those who have gone on before, and we listen to their stories, and we read their stories and their testimony still reverberates in these sagebrush-covered fields.”
50 candles in Portugal
Apostle Ulisses Soares led a cultural celebration earlier this month marking the 50th anniversary of the church’s presence in Portugal.
“Portugal is the lighthouse of Europe,” Soares said in a news release. “...We must continue to help spread this wonderful light in the hearts of all those who do not yet know this truth.”
Today, the nation is home to nearly 50,000 Latter-day Saints, scores of congregations and a temple in the capital of Lisbon, with plans for a second temple, in the coastal city of Porto.
From The Tribune
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) The Los Angeles Temple. A stake president there is calling on members to care for immigrants.
• A stake president, who oversees a number of congregations in Los Angeles, issues an immigrant-friendly email to members.
“Regardless of your immigration status, you are our beloved sisters and brothers, precious children of our Heavenly Father,” President Brian Ames writes. “... Your worth, your value, your place in God’s family is not determined by documentation, political affiliation, or any earthly circumstance. You are children of the Most High God, and that identity is eternal and unchanging.”
• Lesotho’s prime minister leads funeral services for Latter-day Saint girls, leaders and others killed in a crash. Days before, a memorial service drew grieving families, dignitaries, church leaders, government representatives and community members.
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Loved ones grieve Saturday at Maputsoe Sports Stadium in Lesotho for those killed in an accident while en route to a church activity.
• The Community of Christ’s first female prophet-president says her church is in a “financially strong position” more than a year after selling the Kirtland Temple to the Utah-based faith.
• BYU students revived a club you may not expect to see at the church’s flagship school.
• Anti-Mormonism, polygamy fights, newspaper wars and the stinkpot scandal of 1885.
• Sensory rooms are helping Latter-day Saints and other worshippers stay in — or return to — sacred services.
• Hear from the newest member of The Tribune’s religion reporting team.
(Dylan Eubank) Dylan Eubank, a new Salt Lake Tribune religion reporter, hikes at an overpass in Bergen, Norway.