Glenn L. Pace
American Mormon leader

Glenn L. Pace

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American Mormon leader
Gender:
Male
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Birth:
21 March 1940
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The details
Biography

Introduction

Glenn Leroy Pace has been a general authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) since 1985. He served as a member of the presiding bishopric and the First Quorum of Seventy and in 2010 was designated an emeritus general authority.

Education

Pace holds bachelor's and master's degrees in accounting from Brigham Young University.

Employment

Prior to becoming a general authority, Pace worked for several years as the managing director of the LDS Church Welfare program. Earlier in his career he spent several years working in major financial positions in many for-profit companies.

Pace worked for two "big eight" financial firms and as a CFO of a land development firm. Pace began working as a welfare services manager in 1980. Among other assignments while in this position Pace accompanied M. Russell Ballard on a trip to Ethiopia in early 1985 to determine what assistance the church could provide in providing famine relief.

Church service

Born in Provo, Utah, to Latter-day Saint parents, Pace has been affiliated with the LDS Church all his life. He was baptized at the age of eight years and served as a missionary church in the church's New England States Mission from 1960 to 1962.

Pace worked full-time as the managing director of the church's welfare services for several years prior to his call as a general authority.

Pace has served in the LDS Church as an elders quorum president, counselor in a bishopric, and stake clerk early in his adulthood. He also served as the first president of the Australia Sydney North Mission of the church in 1992, while serving in the First Quorum of Seventy.

Pace became the second counselor to Presiding Bishop Robert D. Hales in 1985. In 1992, Pace was released from this position and became a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy. In 1997 and 1998, he was a member of the general presidency of the church's Sunday School and from 2001 to 2003 he was in the general presidency of the Young Men organization.

Pace was released and designated an emeritus general authority at the LDS Church's October 2010 general conference.

Ritualistic child abuse investigation

In July 1990, when he was a member of the LDS Church's presiding bishopric, Pace wrote an internal memorandum to the church's Strengthening Church Members Committee about his investigations into sixty alleged incidents of ritualized child abuse among Latter-day Saints in Utah, Idaho, California, Mexico, and elsewhere. Pace concluded that he believed the allegations and that he suspected parents and other members were participating in ritualized child abuse.

In 1991, the Utah State Legislature appropriated $250,000 for the Attorney General's office to investigate these allegations. The investigators interviewed hundreds of alleged victims, but they were "unable to substantiate with physical evidence the incidents reported". The 1995 report added that the specific accusations against church leaders were "absurd", and the head of psychiatry at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City said he "has never been able to independently verify memories of satanic ritual abuse".

Books

Pace has written three books:

  • Spiritual Plateaus (Deseret Book, 1991), about three plateaus Latter-day Saints face: testimony, sanctification, and spiritual graduate school.
  • Spiritual Revival (Deseret Book, 1993).
  • Safe Journey: An African Adventure (Shadow Mountain, 2003), about his various journeys in Africa, many of which were connected with the operations of the LDS Humanitarian Services.

Family

Pace is married to Jolene Clayson and they are the parents of six children.