Patrick Kearon
Elder Patrick Kearon is the newest member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was called on Thursday, December 7, 2023, and ordained later that day by President Russell M. Nelson and the other members of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Elder Kearon was sustained at the April 2024 general conference.
Elder Kearon, who had served as the senior president of the Presidency of the Seventy since August 2020, filled the vacancy created by the death of President M. Russell Ballard, who passed away on Sunday, November 12, 2023. The British and Irish national has been a General Authority Seventy since April 3, 2010.
In May 2017 he was assigned to serve in the Presidency of the Seventy effective August 1, 2017. He had been serving as a member of the Third Quorum of the Seventy in the Europe Area when he was called to serve in the First Quorum of the Seventy at General Conference in April 2010.
Elder Kearon first came to an understanding of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when he lived in California with a Latter-day Saint family. A few years later he met missionaries on the street in London. After joining the Church of Jesus Christ on Christmas Eve 1987, Elder Kearon has served in numerous Church callings, including assistant ward clerk, ward Young Men president, counselor in a bishopric, branch president, stake president, and Area Seventy.
Kearon was born in Carlisle, Cumberland, England on July 18, 1961. He has two middle names but prefers not to use a middle initial. “It’s just Brits don’t do that,” Elder Kearon told the Deseret News.[1] He was educated in the United Kingdom and the Middle East, where his father worked in the defense industry. At age 10, he attended boarding school in England while his parents remained in Saudi Arabia. He has lived and worked in the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and the United States in various industries, including health care, food, automotive, and transport. He ran his own communications consultancy. His civic and community involvement has included service on the boards of a charity, a school, an enterprise agency and a college.
He married Jennifer Carole Hulme in 1991 and they are the parents of four children, one of whom is deceased. The Kearon family lived in Frankfurt, Germany, where he served in the Church’s Europe Area presidency from 2012 to 2017. They returned to Utah in 2017 when he was called to serve in the Presidency of the Seventy.
More on Elder Patrick Kearon
- Church News, "The ‘beautiful’ and ‘stretching’ life experiences that prepared Elder Kearon to be an Apostle"
- Liahona, "Elder Patrick Kearon: Prepared and Called by the Lord" by Elder D. Todd Christofferson
- All Conference Talks by Patrick Kearon
- "Bringing Christmas Into Focus," Christmas devotional 2019
- "A Holier Pattern of Service," Worldwide Devotional for Young Adults given May 2018
- All General Conference Talks by Patrick Kearon
