Russell M. Nelson, the oldest serving president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who led sweeping church policy changes in the last decade of his life, died on Saturday in Salt Lake City. He was 101.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints confirmed his death in a statement on Saturday night. It said he had died at home and did not give a cause of death.
Long before he became president of the church, Dr. Nelson was a respected surgeon who was part of a team that developed a machine in 1951 to support open-heart surgery. Four years later, at age 31, he became the first person in Utah to perform the procedure. But he left the profession when he was called into the upper echelons of his church at age 59.
Dr. Nelson became president and prophet of the church at 93, and ushered in a surprising spread of new policies, delivering significant changes to a tradition that had grown to more than 17.5 million members worldwide under his leadership as of 2024.
“Eat your vitamin pills. Get some rest,” Dr. Nelson told believers in 2018, the year he became president. “It’s going to be exciting.”
That year, Dr. Nelson instructed members to stop using the term “Mormon” to describe the church and its believers, though many journalists, scholars and others continue to use the word. He explained to members that “to remove the Lord’s name from the Lord’s Church is a major victory for Satan.”
The announcement carried divine authority for believers, who consider the church’s president to be a living prophet. Avoiding the use of “Mormon” has become a sign of devotion for many members.
To increase the church’s global footprint, Dr. Nelson poured energy into building temples across the world. When his presidency began, there were 182 temples. By the end of his presidency, there were at least 194 temples in operation, and at least 170 being planned or under construction.
His energy endeared him to members, Prof. Patrick Mason, a historian at Utah State University, said in an interview.
“I expected him, partly because of his age, to be a caretaker, to maintain the status quo,” Professor Mason said. “From the beginning, he was ambitious, energetic, laying out a clear vision. He wasn’t just speaking in vague platitudes.”
Dr. Nelson made a series of sweeping internal changes that surprised many.
In 2019, he rolled back the church’s controversial policy regarding L.G.B.T.Q. people, which labeled same-sex married couples “apostates” and barred their children from baptisms, even though he had defended the policy when it was issued in 2015, the same year that gay marriage became legal nationwide.
Early in his presidency, he also severed the church’s longstanding ties with the Boy Scouts of America, which had begun admitting gay members and gay adults as scout leaders.
Unlike previous presidents, Dr. Nelson spoke repeatedly about the problem of racism in the United States. The church formed a partnership with the N.A.A.C.P. in 2018 and later donated $10 million to the group.
“A group of us Black Latter-day Saints were working to have the church acknowledge some of the issues within our community,” Darius Gray, a prominent Black member of the church, said in an interview. “It was limping along. As soon as President Nelson became president, things changed.”
“He put his money where his mouth was,” Mr. Gray added.
In his effort to diversify the church, Dr. Nelson picked two new members for its upper leadership, a Chinese American man and a Brazilian man, who he said were the first nonwhite men in the church’s history to hold the roles.
Dr. Nelson also made several changes that to some seemed more pragmatic. He shortened the length of his church’s services across the world, to two hours from three. The church also began a renovation of its Salt Lake temple, though many believers and preservationists were devastated by the removal of its historic murals.
“I call him a venture capitalist for Mormonism, stripping down the faith to the essentials,” Prof. Benjamin Park, a historian at Sam Houston State University, said in an interview. “He was willing to give up heritage ideas and practices.”
Although Dr. Nelson was admired by many, Professor Park said, he was criticized by the liberal and conservative wings of the church. As the 17th president of the church, succeeding Thomas S. Monson, Dr. Nelson, like many religious leaders, faced opposition from his own members during the Covid-19 pandemic when he closed churches and promoted masks and vaccination.
Russell Marion Nelson was born in Salt Lake City on Sept. 9, 1924, the son of Marion Clavar and Edna Anderson Nelson. He did not come from a noteworthy Latter-day Saints family, unlike some other leaders. The second of four children, he attended church meetings alone, without his family.
He wrote in his autobiography, “From Heart to Heart” (1979), that though his parents sent him to church, he would dress up but sometimes head to a park to play football instead. By 11:30 a.m., the children would stop playing and walk home, pretending they had been in Sunday school.
While most children in the church are baptized at 8, he was baptized at 16. And unlike many of his peers, he did not serve on a mission.
At age 10, he worked as an errand boy for his father at Gillham Advertising Agency and became a bank messenger at Tracy Loan and Trust Company. He graduated from East High School in Salt Lake City in 1941.
He received his bachelor’s degree in basic biological sciences in 1945 from the University of Utah, and later earned an M.D. there. He was a resident at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and at the University of Minnesota, where he received his Ph.D. in 1954.
In 1945, he married Dantzel White. They had 10 children together. Ms. White, a talented soprano, declined a full scholarship to the Juilliard School. She died in 2005. Her influence on his life was clear, Dr. Nelson’s ninth child, Marjorie Nelson Lowder, said in an interview.
“He was strict but not a harsh father,” Ms. Lowder said. “The sternness would come in with our mother. He would never stand for disrespecting our mom. He loved and respected her and treated her like a queen.”
In April 2006, Dr. Nelson married Wendy L. Watson, a family and couples therapist, who survives him. Other survivors include eight of his 10 children, 57 grandchildren and more than 167 great-grandchildren.
Dr. Nelson was on the team that built the first heart-lung machine that would later support open-heart surgery. But he was not in the operating room when it was used, according to “Insights from a Prophet’s Life,” a biography of Dr. Nelson by Sheri L. Dew. During the Korean War, he served a two-year Army term and was stationed at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
In 1965, he was offered a position at the prestigious University of Chicago Medical School, but the Latter-day Saints president at the time, David O. McKay, told him to stay in Salt Lake City, so he did. In 1972, he performed open-heart surgery for one of the church’s former presidents, Spencer W. Kimball, who then lived 13 more years.
Dr. Nelson held several leadership positions in the church as he rose through the ranks. In the 1950s, he was the bishop of a ward, similar to a parish. He served as stake president, which oversees several wards, from 1964 to 1971, when he began as general president of the Sunday school.
In 1985, his career as a surgeon ended when he became a member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, the church’s second-highest governing body whose members serve full time for life. Dallin H. Oaks, 93, is next in line to succeed him.
Known for his immense self-discipline, Dr. Nelson would weigh himself every day and adjust his diet if he went up a pound, according to Ms. Dew’s biography. Into his 90s, he would shovel the snow from the sidewalk in the winter and weed his yard in the summer. He skied as often as he could, until he became president of the church, at which point the church security team told him he had to stop.
Mark Walker contributed reporting.
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