Patrick Kearon
Patrick Robert David Kearon (born 18 July 1961 in Carlisle, England) is a British religious leader in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has been a general authority since 2010 and served in the Presidency of the Seventy from August 2017 to December 2023. On 1 August 2020, he became the senior president of the Seventy, the first to hold that role who was born outside the United States since the presidency’s reorganization in 1975. On 7 December 2023, he was called and ordained an apostle, and set apart as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles after the death of M. Russell Ballard.
Kearon spent part of his youth in Saudi Arabia, where his father worked. After his father’s death when he was 19, he left further formal schooling and began working. His early jobs included working for a Member of Parliament, and later for Nestlé in England, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. He also ran his own public affairs consulting company before becoming a full-time church leader. He first learned about the LDS Church in the mid-1980s in Laguna Beach, California, while staying with a Latter-day Saint family. He was baptized on Christmas Eve, 1987.
Before his call to full-time church service, Kearon served as president of the Bristol England Stake and as an area seventy. At the time of his call as a general authority, he lived in Clevedon, North Somerset, England. In 2011, he was named assistant executive director of the church’s Priesthood and Media Services departments. From 2012 to 2015, he served as a counselor in the Europe Area Presidency, becoming Europe Area President in 2015. In May 2017, it was announced that he would join the Presidency of the Seventy on August 1, with responsibility for the church’s North America Northwest and North America West areas.
Kearon has spoken publicly about religious freedom, saying it must protect the rights of everyone, not just one’s own faith. He participated in a 2016 European Union summit addressing the refugee crisis and was quoted in a New York Times op-ed about refugees, noting that their stories are important to us all. As Europe Area President, he started refugee assistance programs and supported existing refugee efforts in the region.
He has given three general conference talks: in October 2010 on being spiritually healed through the atonement of Jesus Christ, including a personal story of a scorpion sting in the Arabian desert; in April 2016 on members’ efforts to help refugees; and in April 2022 addressing those who have survived abuse, violence, or oppression.
Kearon is married to Jennifer Carole Hulme. They met when Hulme studied abroad in London and were married in the Oakland California Temple in 1991. They have four children, the oldest who died from a heart condition at three weeks old.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 09:42 (CET).