After a most extraordinary life of service, leadership, consecration, innovation and love, President Russell M. Nelson — president and prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a world-renowned heart surgeon — died Saturday, Sept. 27, 2025, in Salt Lake City. He was 101.
“I have learned that the most crucial question we each must answer is this: To whom or to what will I give my life?” said President Nelson, speaking during October 2024 general conference just weeks after his 100th birthday. “My decision to follow Jesus Christ is the most important decision I have ever made.”
President Nelson’s beloved wife, Sister Wendy Nelson, was with him when he died. His counselors in the First Presidency, President Dallin H. Oaks and President Henry B. Eyring, visited him in his final days as did each of his living children and their spouses.
Russell Marion Nelson was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Sept. 9, 1924 — the second of Marion C. and Edna Anderson Nelson’s four children. He married Dantzel White in the Salt Lake Temple on Aug. 31, 1945; they are the parents of nine daughters and one son. After her unexpected death in 2005, he married Wendy L. Watson on April 6, 2006.
Known as a Renaissance man by his colleagues, President Nelson graduated first in his University of Utah medical school class in August 1947 at age 22. He worked on the research team that developed the artificial heart-lung machine. In total during his career, President Nelson performed 7,000 surgical operations — including Utah’s first open-heart surgery employing a heart-lung machine in November 1955.
At the height of his surgical career, he was sustained as a member of the Church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on April 7, 1984.
Without hesitation, he shifted the focus. “I didn’t even ask President [Gordon B.] Hinckley, ‘Are you sure?’” President Nelson told the Church News. “My faith is just that profound and simple. When the Lord speaks through His prophet, my mind puts an exclamation point behind it, not a question mark.”
After serving 34 years in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, President Nelson was set apart as the 17th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Jan. 14, 2018.
During his nearly eight-year ministry as President of the Church, President Nelson offered a consistent message: “Our message to the world is simple and sincere: We invite all of God’s children on both sides of the veil to come unto their Savior, receive the blessings of the holy temple, have enduring joy and qualify for eternal life,” he said.
In his October 2024 general conference address, he invited 17 million Latter-day Saints to also offer their own soul to Jesus Christ. “This is the secret to a life of joy!”
President Nelson as a leader
President Nelson became leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after a lifetime of preparation. A man of perfect pitch who for many years played the organ during quorum meetings, President Nelson often addressed Latter-day Saints in their native tongues and was “the best writer” among senior Church leaders, said his counselor in the First Presidency, President Dallin H. Oaks.
“In the many years I have known him, President Nelson has consistently taught me how to selflessly and lovingly serve others through his example,” said President Oaks, reflecting on his four decades of service with President Nelson.
Both President Nelson and President Oaks were sustained as members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on the same day — and both came into the apostleship with no previous experience as a general authority, with President Oaks called while serving as a Utah Supreme Court justice.
President Henry B. Eyring, second counselor in the First Presidency, observed of President Nelson: “I have the blessing of serving at his side. When he walks into a room, that room immediately feels brighter. He carries the Light of Christ with him.”
President Jeffrey R. Holland, acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, said President Nelson “gave the Lord a wonderful package of raw material to work with,” but the Lord blessed him and molded him. “President Nelson is, in so many ways, the complete leader, the exemplary guide for those traveling the mortal path …,” he said. “He is probably the most gentle and kind leader I have ever worked with, realizing that I have worked with among the most gentle and kind men and women on the earth.”
Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said President Nelson was “a remarkable leader in every way” and called him “the most decisive leader I have ever worked with” who was “also very humble.”
Those traits, combined with his ability to ask significant questions, listen and encourage, helped in leading the Church through a most remarkable era in its history.
As President of the Church, President Nelson traveled to 35 nations, changed Church organization, utilized technology, led the Church through a pandemic, issued historic invitations and built bridges of understanding.
He also addressed hundreds of thousands of Latter-day Saints — often in their own language — and called upon kings, presidents and prime ministers. He comforted victims of crime and others who grieve, called children to him and linked arms with top leaders of the NAACP.
Through the Church’s council system and with the full support of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, he has also enacted multiple policy changes within the Church.
Under his leadership, Latter-day Saint leaders replaced home and visiting teaching with ministering, adjusted the Sunday meetings schedule to accommodate home-centered, Church-supported gospel study and asked members to use the full and correct name of the Church. He changed a Church policy, allowing the children of parents who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender to be blessed as infants and baptized; discontinued a policy requiring couples who marry civilly to wait one year before being sealed in the temple; replaced “tithing settlement” with “tithing declaration”; and established a policy allowing women to serve as witnesses of temple sealings and women, youth and children to serve as witnesses for baptismal ordinances.
And as the world was engulfed in the pandemic in November 2020, President Nelson offered a surprising remedy — one that “flies in the face of our natural intuitions” — for all that ails the world — gratitude.
“One of the things the Spirit has repeatedly impressed upon my mind since my new calling as President of the Church is how willing the Lord is to reveal His mind and will,” said President Nelson during the Church’s April 2018 general conference.
President Nelson as temple builder
During a 2019 interview in Rome — the ancient and great city where two millennia ago Peter and Paul preached and died — President Nelson called the dedication of the Rome Italy Temple “a hinge point in the history of the Church.”
“Things are going to move forward at an accelerated pace,” he said. “The Church is going to have an unprecedented future, unparalleled. We are just building up to what is ahead now.”
In his six-plus years as President of the Church, President Nelson announced 185 temples — more than 50% of the Church’s 367 houses of the Lord that are dedicated, under construction or announced and in planning.
In October 2021 general conference, President Nelson shared a video taped in front of the foundation of the historic Salt Lake Temple, then being renovated.
“It is now time that we each implement extraordinary measures — perhaps measures we have never taken before — to strengthen our personal spiritual foundations,” he said after the video. “Unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures.”
When an individual’s spiritual foundation is built solidly upon Jesus Christ, he or she will have no need to fear, he taught. “As you are true to your covenants made in the temple, you will be strengthened by His power.”
In October 2022 general conference, he also announced plans to build “multiple temples in selected large metropolitan areas where travel time to an existing temple is a major challenge,” including four new temples in the Mexico City, Mexico, area.
“Let us never lose sight of what the Lord is doing for us now,” said President Nelson. “He is making His temples more accessible. He is accelerating the pace at which we are building temples. He is increasing our ability to help gather Israel. He is also making it easier for each of us to become spiritually refined.”
He added, “I promise that increased time in the temple will bless your life in ways nothing else can.”
In his final public act before his death, President Nelson dedicated the Church’s 200th temple — the Deseret Peak Utah Temple. “This is the Lord’s house. It is filled with His power,” President Nelson said of the Church’s newest temple, which he dedicated Sunday, Nov. 10, in Tooele, Utah. The Prophet promised that those who live God’s higher law will have access to that power. “God’s power helps us to withstand the trials and temptations of life — with joy in our hearts,” he said.
President Nelson’s compassion, affection
President Nelson will also be remembered for his compassion.
The late President M. Russell Ballard, then acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, said that when he had heart bypass surgery in 1995, he awoke to learn that President Nelson had “stood over the surgeon” during the entire procedure.
“That’s the kind of affection he has for his brethren,” said President Ballard.
In an interview after President Nelson was set apart as President of the Church, President Ballard recalled President Nelson checking on the late Elder Robert D. Hales of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. “He would come over and feel his pulse and look him in the eye and get a report as to what happened overnight,” said President Ballard. In that capacity “he was a physician filled with love for those who he could serve.”
He has lifted and sustained other quorum members with the same “kind of affection,” said President Ballard.
In 2007, the late Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin locked his knees while delivering a conference address; as he spoke, he grew increasingly weak.
Elder Wirthlin’s son, Joseph Wirthlin Jr., remembers leaving his seat in the Conference Center to help his father, only to see President Nelson quickly move to his father’s side at the pulpit. President Nelson put one hand on the Apostle’s shoulder and grabbed his belt with the other. Because of the lifting and stabilizing effort of President Nelson, Elder Wirthlin was able to complete the address.
Joseph Wirthlin Jr. said President Nelson acted with “quiet humility.”
“He stood up and let Dad finish his talk,” he said. “He didn’t make a big fanfare about things. He just stood up and did what was needed and would do that with anyone.”
President Holland remembers receiving a blessing from President Nelson before he underwent surgery. “I was moved to tears under his hands,” he said. “That is what came through. It was not Dr. Nelson who would have known anything and everything about whatever was going on with a few bones and joints. … It was Prophet, Seer and Revelator Nelson. The language of that blessing wasn’t a medical opinion. It was faith.”
Born just five years before the stock market crash of 1929, a young Russell Nelson was curious. He always wanted to know how things worked, said Sheri Dew, a former member of the Relief Society general presidency.
As a 9- or 10-year-old boy, Russell Nelson got on a street car and made his way downtown to Deseret Book, she recounted. He asked an employee to recommend a book about the Church and “somehow left with one,” said Dew.
He was baptized at age 16; “his desire and drive to be part of the Church came much from within,” said his son, Russell Nelson Jr. Although his parents had not been active in the Church during President Nelson’s youth, they never discouraged his Church participation. They also supported their son in his education, which he pursued diligently.
His career in medicine included receiving doctoral degrees from the University of Utah and University of Minnesota and completing additional advanced work in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. He helped pioneer the development of the artificial heart-lung machine, a means of supporting a patient’s circulation during open-heart surgery.
The doctors who worked on the heart-lung machine were taught in medical school “never to touch a human heart,” said Dew. Yet they were willing to defy conventional wisdom to figure out how to save lives.
“As the small group would go to medical conventions, they would share information,” explained Dew, who once asked President Nelson what the team did to protect their personal interests — in terms of patents or academic credit.
He told her, “Our competition wasn’t with each other. Our competition was with disease, death and ignorance.”
This development of the artificial heart-lung machine made open-heart surgery possible; President Nelson performed the first surgery of that kind in Utah in 1955.
Elder Gregory A. Schwitzer, a doctor and emeritus General Authority Seventy, said Dr. Nelson was consistently described during his career as “inspiring, dedicated, competent and highly consistent in everything he did.”
Dr. Nelson is renowned for what he has done, with his creativity and innovation having saved countless lives, Elder Schwitzer said. “He has always been one who has written extensively in the medical literature, he has participated in studies that have advanced the knowledge of cardiovascular surgery.”
His legacy is “now in the lives of many physicians who are cardiovascular surgeons who were trained under his watchful eye.”
President Nelson as husband and father
Sylvia Webster, one of President Nelson’s nine daughters, said her father knew how to balance his life. When he was at work, he was 100% at work. When he was home, he was 100% at home. When he was doing his Church duty, he was 100% on Church duty.
Russell Nelson Jr. said there wasn’t much difference in his father as the surgeon or as President of the Church. He was always consistent.
When he was home, “he was really home,” said Webster.
He taught his children to ski between his legs, to ride a bike and to drive. He read to them often. The family played a lot of ping-pong. Russell Nelson Jr., however, does not remember ever beating his father in the game.
One constant in his father’s life was his wife Dantzel. “It was always obvious that my parents loved each other very much,” Russell Nelson Jr. said.
Webster said her father returned the unfailing support her mother offered him. The family loved music, with all 10 children learning a musical instrument in addition to the piano.
When Dantzel Nelson joined the Tabernacle Choir, President Nelson stepped in. On Sunday mornings when the choir performed, President Nelson helped his nine daughters get ready for Church, trying “to curl our little hair and get everybody dressed.”
“He kept the home fires going,” said Webster. “That’s the kind of relationship they had. It was very sweet and very giving to each other.”
Dantzel died Feb. 12, 2005, just shy of the Nelsons’ 60th wedding anniversary. The Nelson posterity includes 10 children and 57 grandchildren.
Russell Nelson Jr. said losing his mother was deeply sad, especially for his father. “The passing of our mother, we could tell, was a deep hit for him.”
In 2006, he married Wendy L. Watson. Russell Nelson Jr. said the family saw “an immediate change” in President Nelson’s countenance. “The sadness was gone, and it did us all good to see that happiness back.”
Sister Wendy Nelson was by his side for almost two decades and was a “tremendous support for him,” he said.
His life
Webster said that on one occasion, her father was asked to respond to an award he had received.
He stood and said, “It’s simple” and then shared the words of a verse he penned:
“Our God is my maker.
Parents dear are my guide.
An angel wife, my true love,
Children choice are my pride.
The Lord is my Light.
His endless truth, my law.
My joy is in service to others.
My message is my life.”
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