The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has released the dedication and open-house dates for the Salvador Brazil Temple, located in the coastal Brazilian city named after the title of the Savior.
Elder Neil L. Andersen of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles will dedicate the Salvador temple — which will become the South American nation’s 11th operating house of the Lord — on Sunday, Oct. 20.
The two sessions — at 10 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. local time — will be broadcast to all units in the Salvador temple district.
Prior to the dedication, the temple will be open to media, invited-guest and public tours. A media day is scheduled for Monday, Aug. 19, followed by tours for invited guests through Wednesday Aug. 21. The public open house will run from Thursday, Aug. 22, through Saturday, Sept. 7, excluding Sundays.
The dates were first published Monday, May 6, on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
About the Salvador temple
President Russell M. Nelson announced a temple for Salvador on Oct. 7, 2018, one of the 12 new locations for future houses of the Lord identified in the closing session of the October 2018 general conference.
When the temple’s groundbreaking — for Aug. 7, 2021 — was announced three months earlier, a first exterior rendering of the Salvador temple was released, on May 4. The temple is located at Av. Luís Viana Filho, 9636, in the Patamares area of Salvador.
Elder Adilson de Paula Parrella, a General Authority Seventy who was then president of the Church’s Brazil Area, presided over the temple’s groundbreaking, with Elder Joni L. Koch, also a General Authority Seventy and then first counselor in the area presidency, offering a prayer on the site and the construction process.
Elder Koch recognized in his prayer that the city’s name honors the Savior, adding “May the construction of this holy house on the mountaintop be an expression of the privilege that it is to have one in our lives. …
“May the construction of this house symbolize, for everyone here and around the world, a testimony of Thy greatness and the certainty of eternal life.”
About the city of Salvador
Formerly known as São Salvador de Bahia de Todos os Santos (Holy Savior of the Bay of All Saints), Salvador was founded in 1549 by the Portuguese as the first capital of Brazil and is one of oldest colonial cities in the Americas.
Located along Brazil’s northeastern coast, it is the country’s fourth-largest city and is the capital of Brazil’s northeastern state of Bahia. Serving as the first capital of Brazil, from 1549 to 1763, Salvador features Portuguese colonial architecture, a tropical coastline as well as its blending of European, African and Amerindian cultures.
Salvador is currently in the Recife Brazil Temple district, with that temple located a little more than 500 miles away.
About the Church and its temples in Brazil
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.
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 under construction in Belo Horizonte.
An additional 11 temples are in planning and design in Brazil — in Florianápolis, Goiânia, João Pessoa, Londrina, Maceió, Natal, Ribeirão Preto, Santos, São Paulo East, Teresina and Vitória.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article had incorrect dates of when Salvador was the capital of Brazil.
