The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) continues to expand and grow more international in Spain, reports the Salt Lake Tribune (May 2). The church has grown more among immigrants than among native Spanish people, Mark Eddington writes. It was the late filmmaker Jose Maria Oliveira, a Latter-day Saint since 1966, who played a significant role in the church’s gaining of recognition and membership in Spain, which has become the largest LDS country in Europe after the UK, with 68,000 members. Eddington cites independent researcher Matt Martinich (who tracks the church’s growth and retention around the world for the site ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com) as showing that the faith has been enjoying its most rapid European growth in decades. Membership in Spain, for instance, grew by 3.85 percent last year, the highest uptick since 2007. Martinich said most of today’s converts in Spain originally hail from Latin American and African countries, with Latin Americans making up about 80 percent of the members in some congregations. “Unlike some of the negative stuff you might read about the church shrinking in Europe, that is definitely not true in Spain,” Martinich said. “Instead, the church in Spain is becoming much more cosmopolitan and more based on immigrants than the native population.” As Maria Brimhall, Jose Oliveira’s daughter, said, “When you attend church in Spain, you see most members are from Latin [American] countries like Ecuador and Venezuela.”
LDS temple in Madrid (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/media/collection/madrid-spain-temple-images?
lang=eng).
