 Even as he ascended to the pinnacle of a worldwide faith, Thomas S. Monson never stopped being a Mormon bishop. “With tender feelings we announce that Thomas S. Monson, president and prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, died this evening at 10:01 p.m. in his home in Salt Lake City,” church spokesman Eric Hawkins wrote in an email Tuesday at 11:39 p.m. “He was with family at the time of his passing.” 
 
 
 
 A public viewing is scheduled for Jan. 11 at the Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City. One of the most memorable moments of Monson's tenure came in October 2012, when he announced at church conference that the minimum age to depart on missions was being lowered to 19 from 21 for women; and to 18 from 19 for men. In October of that year, though, Monson called three new apostles to the faith’s Quorum of the Twelve — the first time since 1906 that body had seen so many new faces at once. “While serving for over half a century in the leadership of his church, President Monson demonstrated wisdom, inspired leadership and great compassion,” Trump said in a statement. The change triggered a historic influx of missionaries, and proved a milestone change for women by allowing many more to serve. He was known for his love of show tunes, Boy Scouts and the Utah Jazz. He walked down and greeted the man, wheeled the chair around and took him back to his room. “His stories seem to transcend time and race. Deseret News archives President Thomas S. Monson, center, First Counselor Henry B. Eyring, left, and Second Counselor Dieter F. Uchtdorf comprise the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. On the Saturday in April 2008, when Monson was sustained as president, Monsignor J. Terrence Fitzgerald of Salt Lake City’s Catholic Diocese took some newly ordained priests to lunch at Little America in downtown Salt Lake City. LDS leaders unveiled a mormonandgay.org website — reaching out to same-sex attracted members and their loved ones. That was exacerbated when the offshoot Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints ran afoul of the law, and its leader, Warren Jeffs, was convicted of child sex abuse. Monson, the 16th president of the Mormon church, has died after nine years in office. Monson spent his entire career in the service of the LDS Church, working alongside every president since 1963, when he was named one of the 12 apostles at age 36. Soon after college, Monson joined the church-owned Deseret News in 1948, where he worked as an advertising executive at the Newspaper Agency Corp. Later, he became general manager of the Deseret News Press, a commercial printing firm. In 1963, then-President David O. McKay elevated him to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, making him one of the youngest men in the 20th century to join that powerful body. Stories that matter 
 
 Another prompting led him to fly abruptly to East Germany, behind the Iron Curtain, to give a blessing to a woman with pneumonia. In the 1990s, he was assigned to review the church’s new instruction manual, called “Preach My Gospel,” for use by would-be missionaries. His criticism: It needs more personal stories of faith and successful conversion. The talks grew naturally from his own relationship style. In 1978, he gave President Spencer W. Kimball a written opinion that favored petitioning the Lord again with a plea to extend the priesthood to all worthy men. A World War II veteran, Monson served in the Navy and spent a year overseas before returning to get a business degree at the University of Utah and a master's degree in business administration from the church-owned Brigham Young University. That same year, on Oct. 7, he married Johnson in the Salt Lake LDS Temple. The couple had three children, eight grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. Who's to say if President Monson had finished another 10 laps and taken his time to get up to the hospital or waited until after work that night to go up, I don't know, but there might not have been a friend there to receive him. He never left her side as she recovered. Ann Monson Dibb, one of three children born to President Monson and his wife, Frances — who died in May 2013 after 64 years of marriage — once said her father lived three scriptures from the Book of James.
– The 15th man to succeed Joseph Smith as chief of the Mormon church has died. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says 90-year-old church president Thomas Monson died at his Salt Lake City home Tuesday evening, the AP reports. Monson—who was ordained as a bishop at the age of 22 and became one of the church's apostles at 36—had led the church for almost a decade and largely remained behind the scenes during a tumultuous 10 years for the church, though he was well-known for helping the needy and often turned up unannounced at funerals or at the bedsides of the ill, reports the Salt Lake Tribune, which describes him as an "affable leader" and a "folksy preacher." Monson, who was born in Salt Lake City and served in the Navy during World War II, was president of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for 13 years before becoming church leader. The AP reports that he's likely to be remembered for his humanitarian work, for lowering the minimum age for missionaries to 18 for men and 19 for women—and for leading his church's support of California's same-sex marriage ban in 2008. The Deseret News notes that Monson also, as chairman of the Missionary Executive Committee, assigned the first black Mormon missionary. No successor has been named yet, but under church protocol, the next president will be 93-year-old Russell Nelson, who is now the longest-serving member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.