A groundbreaking ceremony was held Saturday for Southern Arizona’s first temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Dieter F. Uchtdorf, a church official, presided at the invitation-only ceremony. Services were broadcast live to area meetinghouses in English and in Spanish.
The temple will be built on a seven-acre site in the Catalina Foothills, near where East Ina Road curves into Skyline Drive.
The church submitted plans to Pima County for the two-story, 34,000-square-foot, mission-style temple in 2013.
More than 700 people attended the Tucson ceremony, at which a multi-stake choir performed, according to an LDS Church News report posted Saturday on the website of Deseret News in Salt Lake City.
Uchtdorf referred to the Mormon battalion that came through the area in 1846 and said it is remarkable how much the church has grown since then, the report said, adding that the Tucson area is home to more than 30,000 members of the church.
Uchtdorf, whose titles are president and second counselor in the First Presidency, told the crowd he had volunteered to come for the ceremony because of his family’s ties to Arizona and pilot training he had received here, said the report by Jill Adair posted by the Deseret News.
“You are a marvelous community of people, sticking together with a diversity of history, cultures and people,” he was quoted as saying.
The temple will be the church’s sixth in Arizona.
