Saints in Portugal

By Eric Brodin

Worldwide publicity followed the governmental change that brought Portugal’s first free elections in fifty years. That was April 1974, and within seven months another, much less publicized event took place—but one with much potential for the Portuguese people. The Portuguese government permitted the legal entry of a mission president and missionaries from “A Igreja de Jesus Cristo dos Santos dos Últimos Dias”—the Mormons.

In April 1975, Elder Thomas S. Monson of the Council of the Twelve dedicated the nation for missionary work. Since that time, from three members of record in the entire nation the Church has grown to more than 750 members, with an average of forty-three new Saints joining the Church each month.

Just as exciting is the fact that already a few of the hundred missionaries in Portugal are native Portuguese—and half the missionaries are Brazilian citizens. Brazil was founded as a colony of Portugal more than four centuries ago, much as the United States was founded as a colony of Britain. Today Brazil has eleven stakes and a temple soon to be dedicated. And just as American missionaries first brought the gospel to the “mother country” of England in the 1830s and 1840s, so today Brazilian missionaries are carrying that same gospel message to their “mother country,” Portugal.

Portugal’s first mission president, Elder W. Grant Bangerter, is today a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy. When he arrived in Portugal, excitement among the missionaries was high. But the work was hard. When there is no smoothly running Church organization to bring investigators to, it is harder to show them the gospel in action.

In their home in Santo Amaro, a suburb of Lisboa (the capital of Portugal), Brother and Sister Leme explain how they came to be among the first converts in Portugal. Sister Leme recounts: “I was attending a Boy Scout troop meeting at our son’s English-language school. Present was a dynamic, outgoing American lady, Geraldine Bangerter, who strikingly said, ‘We are Mormons and we are here to open up the missionary work in Portugal.’”

Sister Leme’s interest was immediate, and she says, “After only three lessons, I knew it was true.” Her husband, a pilot for a Portuguese airline, was often away, but after receiving the missionary lessons he, too, was convinced.

Even before she was a baptized member, Sister Leme was active in the budding Church organization. “I was a Relief Society counselor before I was a member,” she recalls, and the Leme family speak with joy about their visit to the London Temple where on 6 October 1976, exactly a year after their baptism, they were sealed together as a family for time and eternity.

Since the Lemes joined the Church, the Church has grown to two branches in Lisboa, Portugal’s largest city. Today those branches have more than 200 members each—spread among a population of 775,000, not counting the suburbs. Another branch is in the second largest city, Porto, which is a little larger than Salt Lake City; and a fourth branch was recently opened in Coimbra, a provincial capital with a population smaller than Provo, Utah—yet the fourth largest city in Portugal.

Portugal’s 8,900,000 people live in the southwestern corner of Europe, and in many ways that location has shaped the nation’s history. After driving out the Moors in 1249, the Portuguese kings looked south and west—to the sea. Portuguese navigators discovered many Atlantic islands, including Madeira and the Azores, and they were the first modern Europeans to reach India and China, by sailing south around Africa. Though they were later outstripped by more powerful and populous European states—first Spain and then France, the Netherlands, and Britain—large remnants of the empire still remained until the new government granted independence to Angola and Mozambique in Africa only a few years ago.

Yet despite Portugal’s long history, the Saints are young—both in age and in time in the Church. The average convert is 32 years old, and anyone who has been a member for 2 1/2 years is an old-timer!

When the Church first came to Portugal, many hundreds of refugees were pouring into the country from the former African colonies, especially Angola, which was in the throes of civil war. One such refugee family was that of Jose Cunho Ossorio, who is now the mission Aaronic Priesthood leader. He had been an executive in a business in Angola, and when the civil war came he had to leave behind his home and most of his belongings. But, as he expressed it, “while we lost all of our worldly goods, I gained everything when I was able to accept the gospel here in Portugal.”

Since Portugal is 98.4 percent Roman Catholic, most of the Saints had a background in that religion—but few so intensely as President and Sister Fernando Amaral. “We had been catechism teachers and many of our friends turned against us when we first started to attend the Mormon Church meetings in the little Roma hotel. But in the Church we soon gained many friends and today the work in the Church fills our lives with great meaning.” With President Amaral presiding over one of the Lisboa branches, and Sister Amaral serving as mission Relief Society leader, they have plenty of opportunity to find that meaning!

President Amaral was one of the first two Saints in Portugal to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood. The other was Julio Branco, now the mission Melchizedek Priesthood leader. The Church has changed his whole outlook on life, he says. “I was part of the prosperous middle class in Portugal, to whom business was everything and the family came in second. I lived the ‘good life,’ and with my partner had established four gift and souvenir shops. I smoked three packs of cigarettes a day and consumed a fair share of liquor, together with equally prosperous colleagues and friends.”

But changes came from outside: “With the change of government my secure world began to fall into pieces. By March 1975 we had lost two of the stores, and with the revolution no tourists came. My friends of wealthier days had either left the country or didn’t want to know me any longer. I was deeply in debt for merchandise I couldn’t sell. I didn’t know what to do, where to turn.”

Then in July 1975, two missionaries came to the door and challenged him and his family to accept their message. Four months later they were baptized. “My life, and that of my family, has not been the same since. The gospel has made our family more united. Now we make our decisions together, and our goals are higher than before. We have plans for a mission for Jorge, my fourteen-year-old son, and a temple marriage for both my children. In the old days I worked hard because hard work brought money. Today I work hard, but I do it in order to benefit my family—we work together in the store. The gospel and the Church have brought wonderful changes in my life and in the lives of all members of our family.”

The fervor of the new converts translates into impressive figures—60 percent activity among Melchizedek Priesthood holders in the Porto Branch, for instance, and 70 percent activity among the priests. That strength in the Aaronic Priesthood becomes even more important, considering the fact that almost two-thirds of the membership of the Porto Branch is between fourteen and twenty years old, though the newest converts are coming from the twenty to twenty-five-year-old group. And yet these young members quickly assume the responsibility for the Church in their homeland, and less than two years after the first missionaries entered Porto, the branch presidency was composed entirely of Portuguese Saints.

The national media have noticed the growth of the Church in Portugal, and favorable articles are helping draw attention to the Church. In a nation where Latter-day Saints were completely unheard of only three years ago, the Church is already beginning to have an impact. But the greatest impact is, as always, in the lives of the members. Misson President W. Lynn Pinegar says, “I am particularly impressed with the way the local brethren are taking over responsibilities, and how they grow in confidence and gain the stature they require to fulfill the needs of their callings. It is a joy to see the Portuguese members respond.”

In three years of existence, the Portugal Lisbon Mission has already grown to include four branches, all with native Portuguese branch presidents. There are more than 750 members now in a nation where an average of 43 new members are baptized monthly.