Stability attracts Latin Americans to Mormonism

By Kylie Stott

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Early on a summer morning in Buenos Aires, two beaming Mormon missionaries welcomed about 100 believers for a three-hour marathon of sermons, singing and discussion groups at the Belgrano Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints.

In Argentina and across traditionally Catholic Latin America, Latter-day Saints churches such as this one are multiplying, and the region boasts the largest Mormon membership outside the United States, at some 5.2 million people.

Globally the church claims 13.5 million members, a similar number to the world Jewish population. Since the 1950s Mormonism has spread rapidly in Latin America partly because of proximity to the United States, where the religion was born.

The perceived stability and status of the church is also a draw for many Latin Americans who have lived through economic and political turmoil.

"To begin with it wasn''t easy, obviously it was a life-changing decision ... But now I have the faith and I have a shield to protect me from society, because today''s world is a difficult one," Diego Lacho, a 28-year-old who is the most recent convert in the Belgrano congregation.

Lacho, a casino worker, married a Mormon woman three years ago and was baptized in August. He has learned to follow church rules against smoking, alcohol and coffee.

At the church he joins the cleanly shaved men in suits or collared shirts. The women wear skirts and dresses.

The Belgrano church''s wood and velvet hall, which fills twice over each Sunday, is just one of the 692 Latter-day Saints chapels in Argentina. There are 5,500 chapels in all of Latin America, three times the number there were in 1970.

"I served as a young missionary in Chile over 30 years ago and at that time the church was just starting to grow in South America," said Elder Shane Brown, president of the Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay division of the church.

"There had been a prophecy that said the church would grow slowly but then that it would grow into an oak in South America, and I am really a witness of that."

Mormonism has also grown strongly in the Philippines. Expansion elsewhere in Asia has been much slower, and in Europe Latin American immigrants account for much of the growth.

THE PERFECT CHURCH

Sociologist Cesar Ceriani, who recently published a book on Mormon missionary work in Argentina, says Latin Americans see the Latter-day Saints as pure, reliable and economically powerful in a region often plagued by instability and corruption.

The church has an estimated global annual revenue of $5 billion, and everywhere it is expanding it spends heavily on new temples and chapels and on aid projects like clean water wells, hospitals and educational kits.

"The church has a lot of visible power, and people notice that the missionaries are always so neat, and the mission presidents are always so busy and well-dressed," Ceriani said.  Continued...