The First Presidency has announced that groundbreaking for the Santos Brazil Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will take place on Aug. 1. Elder Ronald M. Barcellos, a General Authority Seventy who will be serving as a counselor in the Brazil Area presidency, will preside at the Saturday ceremony. Born in São Paulo, Brazil, Elder Barcellos grew up about 50 miles from Santos, linking the ceremony to the local region in a meaningful way.
The announcement was made in a May 26 news release published on ChurchofJesusChrist.org. The Santos groundbreaking will be the third temple groundbreaking in Brazil in 2026, following ceremonies for the João Pessoa temple on Jan. 24 and the Teresina temple on April 18.
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The Santos Brazil Temple was first announced on April 3, 2022, by then-Church President Russell M. Nelson during general conference. It was one of 17 temple locations announced at that time, including another temple in Brazil, the Maceió Brazil Temple. The Santos temple is planned as a two-story building of about 23,000 square feet and will be built at Avenida Doutor Waldemar Leão, 305, in the Jabaquara neighborhood of Santos, in the state of São Paulo.
Brazil has long been one of the Church’s most significant international centers of growth. Missionaries began preaching in southern Brazil in 1928. By the time the São Paulo Brazil Temple, the first temple in South America, was dedicated in 1978, Church membership in the country had reached 54,000. Since then, the Church has expanded rapidly across Brazil. Today, the country is home to more than 1.5 million Latter-day Saints organized into more than 2,000 wards and branches.
With the Santos project, Brazil now has 24 temples in various stages of operation, construction and planning. Eleven temples are currently operating: São Paulo, Recife, Porto Alegre, Campinas, Curitiba, Manaus, Fortaleza, Rio de Janeiro, Belém, Brasília and Salvador. Six more are under construction, including the Belo Horizonte, Ribeirão Preto, Londrina, Natal, João Pessoa and Teresina temples. Seven additional temples remain in planning and design stages: São Paulo East, Vitória, Maceió, Santos, Goiânia, Florianópolis and Campo Grande.
The new groundbreaking reflects the continued expansion of temple building in Brazil and the growing needs of Latter-day Saint members in the country. As one of the Church’s largest membership populations outside the United States, Brazil continues to play a major role in the global development of temple worship and Church growth.
