About
Dieter Friedrich Uchtdorf (born 6 November 1940) is a German religious leader who is currently the acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Prior to his calling to full-time church service, he worked as an aviator and airline executive. Called as an apostle in 2004, he served as Second Counselor to Thomas S. Monson in the First Presidency from 2008 until Monson’s death on 2 January 2018. Currently, Uchtdorf is the third most senior apostle in the ranks of the church.
Uchtdorf was born to Sudeten German parents Karl Albert Uchtdorf and Hildegard Else Opelt in Moravská Ostrava (German: Mährisch-Ostrau), which at the time was in the Nazi-occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now Ostrava, Czech Republic). His father was a customs officer, who was conscripted into the German Army toward the end of World War II and sent to the Western Front. When a young child, Uchtdorf traveled with his mother and three siblings through areas being bombed in a move to Zwickau in eastern Germany. He later said of this period: “We were refugees with an uncertain future… I played in bombed…
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