Elder Patrick Kearon has middle names, so why doesn’t the new Latter-day Saint apostle use initials?

This article was first published in the ChurchBeat newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox each Wednesday night.

Elder Patrick Kearon doesn’t use a middle initial, which makes him the first Latter-day Saint apostle in 125 years to make that choice.

“Now hold on,” some readers may say. Elder Ulisses Soares joined the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 2018, and he doesn’t use an initial.

The difference is that Elder Soares doesn’t have a middle name. There are references to Elder Ulisses S. Soares online, but that is a phantom “S.” He does not have a middle name.

Elder Kearon, on the other hand, has two middle names.

So why does Elder Patrick Robert David Kearon not go by Elder Patrick R.D. Kearon? It makes him the first apostle with a middle name who does not use an initial since Elder Rudger (Judd) Clawson, who was ordained an apostle in 1898.

“It’s just Brits don’t do that,” Elder Kearon told the Deseret News.

Elder Kearon was called as an Area Seventy in 2005 and as a General Authority Seventy in 2010.

“I can’t remember if it’s when I was (called as) an Area Seventy, probably, or General Authority Seventy, and I knew the pattern was to use middle initials because we see that all the time. It’s just not our way,” he said. “We just, we just don’t do that. Or it’s very rare to, anyway, so I just said I’d prefer not to use a middle initial. So that was probably decided 13 or 18 years ago, something like that.”

Middle names grew in popularity in the United States throughout the 1800s. The first church president, Joseph Smith, did not have a middle name. But his nephew did, and that middle name — and initial — was a helpful identifier when Joseph F. Smith became an apostle and eventually the church’s sixth president.

By 1914, all but one church leader — Rudger Clawson — who spoke in general conference used an initial.

Since then, the only apostles not to use one have been those who didn’t have middle names:

• Elder LeGrand Richards.

• Elder Matthew Cowley.

• Elder Ulisses Soares.

And, yes, for those who know, some apostles have used a first initial because they have gone by their middle names, such as Elders L. Tom Perry, M. Russell Ballard and D. Todd Christofferson.

There’s more context about Latter-day Saint leaders and their middle names and initials in this LDS Living story.

My recent stories

• Church changes meeting schedule for Easter and Christmas holidays (Feb. 3)

• Church calls charge against Latter-day Saint stake president ‘misguided’ (Feb. 1)

• Can religion and spirituality improve mental health? Here’s what decades of research show (Jan. 31)

• Republican, Democrat both warn against rise of antisemitism (Jan. 31)

About the church

• Elder Dale G. Renlund met with Cambodia’s prime minister and announced a donation of more than $2 million for a cardiac hospital during a ministry tour.

• An effort to reverse the county council’s approval of the the Heber Valley Utah Temple failed to gather enough signatures to put the proposed referendum on the 2024 general election ballot.

• A Harvard professor speaking at a BYU forum assembly invited people to embrace faith in the public sphere.

• You’ve likely heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls. There was a great line from a member of the General Sunday School Presidency during a BYU devotional, referencing the scrolls. Brother Jan E. Newman talked about how social media lures users into endless scrolling and called it the “Dead See Scroll.”

• The world’s most famous YouTuber recently partnered with JustServe.

• Church colleges and universities held a Date Night that was “bursting at the seams.”

• The church responded to the Japan earthquake with donations, service and relief

• A Black former Bush administration official talks about how joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been an important part of his quest to become whole.

• The First Presidency announced the groundbreaking date for the San Luis Potosi Mexico Temple.

What I’m reading

• You gotta read this one: My colleague Meg Walter asked AI to produce an image of a Utah potluck dinner. The images throughout are odd, funny and finally, spot on.

• A proposed law in Utah would allow clergy to report abuse or neglect. The bill attempts to strike a balance between clergy-penitent privilege for religious confessions and the need to report suspected abuse.

• Elmo’s X, formerly known as Twitter, account asked an innocuous question. “Elmo was not expecting it to open a yawning chasm of despair,” The New York Times reported in a paywalled story that was both fun and meaningful.

• Caitlin Clark is about to break the U.S. college record for most career points in women’s basketball. This is a deep dive into what she’s accomplished and what it all means.

• Utah’s Legislature is also considering its own Religious Freedom Restoration Act. A writer said people should support it because it “will create a strong framework to deal with unforeseen religious freedom conflicts.”

• Two weeks after giving birth to her eighth child, a church member named Hannah Neeleman competed in the Mrs. World beauty pageant and was featured in The New York Times (paywall).

Behind the Scenes

If my tease above didn’t do it, please let that lumpy green goo on the plate in this photo motivate you to read Meg Walter’s funny, short romp of a story about asking AI to make images of a Utah potluck dinner.