The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has released the groundbreaking date for the Londrina Brazil Temple, one of the Church’s 23 total temples in the South American nation.
Elder Ciro Schmeil, a General Authority Seventy and first counselor in the Church’s Brazil Area presidency, will preside at the Aug. 17 groundbreaking and offer a prayer to dedicate the site and construction process.
Of the Church’s 350 temples total worldwide that are dedicated, under construction or in planning and design, nine have concluded or are concluding construction and have been announced for dedication, with 42 more currently under construction.
The Church makes every effort to construct temples in an expeditious manner. At times, various reasons may delay a temple’s completion and dedication.
The Londrina groundbreaking date was first published Monday, June 10, on ChurchofJesusChrist.org. Attendance at the groundbreaking will be by invitation only, with additional details on the event to be released as the date draws closer.
It is the second groundbreaking scheduled for Aug. 17, with a similar ceremony planned for the Austin Texas Temple in the United States.
President Russell M. Nelson announced a temple for Londrina in the October 2022 general conference. It was one of 18 locations — also including Brazil’s Ribeirão Preto temple — that he identified at the close of the Sunday afternoon session.
Less than two months later, a site for the Londrina house of the Lord was released, on Nov. 28, 2022. Planned as a single-story temple of approximately 32,000 square feet, it will be built at Avenida Harry Prochet, S/N, Jardim São Jorge, Londrina, in the state of Paraná.
Besides both being announced as new temples at the same time in October 2022, Brazil’s Londrina and Ribeirão Preto temples have also progressed nearly side by side since. The two sites were released on the same day, with plans calling for temples of similar dimensions. Exterior renderings for the two temples were published on Jan. 8, 2024. And the upcoming June 22 groundbreaking for the Ribeirão Preto temple was the most recent one announced by the Church.
Located in southern Brazil nearly 300 miles west of São Paulo and with a population of nearly 590,000 people, Londrina is in the northern region of the state of Paraná. The city dates back to the 1920s and 1930s, with the arrival of German and Japanese settlers and a British coffee production company. Londrina is built around Lake Igapó, a group of four connected man-made lakes.
Nearly 1.5 million Latter-day Saints in more than 2,170 congregations reside in Brazil, with missionary work and Church operations dating back to 1928. The Book of Mormon was translated and published in Portuguese in 1940, helping spark a new era of growth in Brazil.
Brazil is home to 23 total temples dedicated, under construction or announced, including the São Paulo Brazil Temple, the first not only in Brazil but across all of South America when it was dedicated in 1978.
Other dedicated and operating temples are located in Belém, Brasília, Campinas, Curitiba, Fortaleza, Manaus, Porto Alegre, Recife and Rio de Janeiro, with a temple scheduled for dedication in Salvador in October 2024. The Londrina and Ribeirão Preto temples will soon be joining the one under construction in Belo Horizonte.
An additional nine temples are in planning and design in Brazil — in Florianópolis, Goiânia, João Pessoa, Maceió, Natal, Santos, São Paulo East, Teresina and Vitória.
Londrina is in the Curitiba Brazil Temple district, with the temple a direct distance of about 185 miles to the southeast requiring a drive of at least five hours.
