BREAKING NEWS: President Nelson and Other Church Leaders Meet with Pope Francis

Hello again, everyone! As part of his visit to Rome Italy to dedicate the temple this weekend, President Nelson sought for and was given the opportunity to meet with Pope Francis, the pontiff of the Catholic Church. Pope Francis, who hails from Argentina, was surprised and grateful when President Nelson greeted him in Spanish. The meeting was meant to last around 15-20 minutes, but the Pope extended it to around 35 minutes or so. President Nelson was joined in that meeting by President M. Russell Ballard, Elder Massimo De Feo, the Church's first Italian general authority, Elder Alessandro Dini Ciacci, an Italian area seventy, and President Nelson's executive secretary.

President Nelson and the pope exchanged gifts and shared common beliefs and values, particularly talking about their mutual concern for the youth and children of the world. President Nelson also highlighted the partnership that has existed in various parts of the world between the Church and Catholic charitable organizations. The pope and President Nelson invited each other to visit whenever the opportunity to do so presents itself in the future. You can read more about the visit between Pope Francis and President Nelson's delegation in the Church News, via the Newsroom and in the the Deseret News. The latter article particularly highlights the cooperative efforts of the Church and the Catholic Church.

I will continue to be on the lookout for further updates on this weekend's dedicatory events. In the meantime, I did want to note one other thing: I have spoken before about my belief that the Church will have at least 200 temples operating by or before the Church's bicentennial anniversary (which will, as noted, be occurring on Saturday April 6, 2030). This article, published by the Church News in January of this year, noted the Church was well on track to do that, whether or not an official goal is made to do so.

When the first dedicatory sessions are held for the Rome Italy Temple tomorrow, that will mean that the Church would just need to complete 38 of the temples in various other phases of construction by or before the aforementioned bicentennial. As of tomorrow, there will be roughly 11.07 years remaining until that bicentennial, so as long as the Church completes around 3.43 temples per year within that time, it should easily be doable, especially since the Church already has 4 other temples scheduled to be dedicated before the October General Conference.

So the average number needing to be completed per year will thus be going down considerably within the next two months, and that will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future. It is also worth noting that the Church is anticipated to go from 162 dedicated temples by this time tomorrow to at least 176 temples by sometime in mid-2021. 14 temple dedications in around a two year period is tremendous to think about.

With that said, I do continue to monitor all Church news and temple developments, and will do my level best to bring word of those to you all as I receive it. That does it for this post. Any and all comments are, as always, welcome and appreciated, on any post at any time, as long as such comments are made in accordance with the established guidelines. Thank you for the privilege of your time. If you enjoyed what you read here and would like to stay informed of newly-added content, please feel free to subscribe. Until my next post, I wish each one of you all the best and pray that the Lord will bless you all in everything you do.