The Church in South America

German immigrants to Argentina and Brazil first organized Church meetings, leading to the establishment of a South American mission in 1925. After World War II, the Church began growing quickly and by 2019 made up roughly one-quarter of all Latter-day Saints worldwide. The first temple on the continent was dedicated in Brazil in 1978.

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History of the Church in South America

When Latter-day Saint apostle Parley P. Pratt visited South America in 1851, he saw great potential for establishing the Church in the region. Lacking sufficient funds, however, and impeded by political and language barriers, Pratt left the following year; it was decades before the Church established an official presence on the continent. In the 1920s, a few German Latter-day Saint immigrants began holding meetings and inviting nonmember friends, which led to the opening of an official South American mission in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1925. Apostle Melvin J. Ballard, who led the mission, later prophesied that, after a period of slow growth, the Church in South America would grow to “be a power in the Church.”

Argentina and Brazil maintained a small but growing number of Latter-day Saints until after World War II. Over the next 20 years, conversion numbers swelled as missionary efforts expanded into Uruguay (1947) and Paraguay (1950, then Chile and Peru (1956), and finally Bolivia (1964), Ecuador (1965), Colombia (1966), and Venezuela (1966). Beginning in the 1950s, members participated in a program to build local chapels to accommodate the burgeoning membership through donating funds and labor. Their contributions also helped fund the construction of temples in South America, the first of which was dedicated in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1978. Since then, dozens of temples have been dedicated, and several South American Latter-day Saints have served in general Church leadership positions with worldwide responsibilities, including Elder Ulisses Soares, who was ordained an Apostle in 2018.

By 2019, South America was home to roughly one-quarter of all Latter-day Saints, with congregations in every country in the continent. Many Church members in South America see this growth as fulfillment of ancient and modern prophecy: In addition to Elder Ballard’s prophecy, the Book of Mormon emphasizes promised blessings for the descendants of native American peoples, and Joseph Smith prophesied that the Church would fill North and South America.