Joyful Day of the Dead commemorations rally US Latino communities despite immigration raid fears

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — These crucial religious, family and community celebrations for most Mexicans and many other Latin Americans have taken on special significance this year in U.S. Latino communities, as the Trump administration escalates immigration enforcement raids, including in Minnesota.

Giovanna Dell'orto
November 3, 2025

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — More than 100 people followed Aztec dancers through an arch of paper flowers into El Colegio High School on Saturday morning to visit altars that students had created to commemorate Día de Muertos or Day of the Dead.

“It’s … a way of greeting our ancestors into our homes, back into our lives, even if they’re like not here physically, but spiritually,” said Daniela Rosales, a senior at the small, bilingual school in Minneapolis. “It’s a way of just having the community come all together and knowing that in some way they might feel safe.”

These crucial religious, family and community celebrations for most Mexicans and many other Latin Americans have taken on special significance this year in U.S. Latino communities, as the Trump administration escalates immigration enforcement raids, including in Minnesota.

While some organizers worried that fears of deportation would cast a pall on public celebrations, participants turned out in droves in cities big and small, saying the rituals brought a much-needed sense of resilience and community pride.

“We decided we can’t cave,” said Justin Ek, one of the founders of the Day of the Dead festival in Mankato, a city in the Minnesota farmland. “Our cultural celebrations are what we need to fill our souls for what’s to come.”

The Indigenous Latino artist’s family started a small commemoration in the parking lot of their painting business in 2018. This year, some 12,000 people joined the daylong celebration that included live music and several dozen papier-mâché sculptures of Catrinas (elaborately dressed skeletons) and fantasy creatures called alebrijes. Most activities were funded by community donations.

Grieving, but with happiness: The spiritual side of Day of the Dead

Ek’s father came to the U.S. from Mexico as a preteen, and in the struggle to make a living and eventually build a family, many connections with his homeland and relatives there disappeared, Ek said.

Day of the Dead festivities became a way to grieve that and rekindle some ties, he added, in addition to commemorating more recent family deaths.

“It’s our way to honor what we lost,” Ek said.

The holiday’s balance of joyful remembrance and a renewed sense of presence distinguishes it from both the outright party atmosphere of Halloween and the somber memorials of the Christian holy days of All Saints on Nov. 1 and All Souls’ Day on Nov. 2.

In fact, Day of the Dead evolved over centuries from Indigenous practices across the Americas, and only settled on these fall dates after Catholicism was introduced, said Cary Cordova, a University of Texas professor.

Different regions mark it with unique details, but the crucial element is paying homage to the dead with “ofrendas,” festive offerings of food, drinks, music and pastimes favorite by the dead. Their souls, many believe, return for a visit, guided by the candles and marigold flowers that mark the path to the ofrendas.

Whether in his Mexican childhood or today in Mankato, Luis Alberto Orozco said the key is to commemorate by “having fun as they would be” — with the departed’s favorite snacks and songs.

“It’s remembering people who passed on positively because they would want us to remember them happy … and making ourselves feel they’re with us,” Orozco said.

Joyful and prideful commemorations defy fears of immigration enforcement

As the emcee of this year’s celebration, Orozco reflected on tense conversations in recent months about whether the event in Mankato might draw immigration enforcement raids, especially as rumors spread on social media.

“We decided we were not going to be afraid. It was important for us to keep our faith,” he said. “Once I got to the event and saw all the people smile, all the fears went away.”

The recent crackdown on illegal immigration in Chicago has generated controversy and stirred fears across that city.

Lisa Noce, some of whose ancestors immigrated from Mexico to Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood where she grew up, worried people would stay away from a Day of the Dead installation she helped create by the National Museum of Mexican Art there. But a big crowd came.

“I’m very thankful that it turned out that way,” she said, adding that she also sets up a smaller ofrenda in her kitchen with candy, Barbie dolls, and smiling photos of deceased family members.

‘Ofrendas’ range from family shrines to political statements

For more than a century, Day of the Dead artistic representations have also moved from the family to the public sphere.

Starting in Mexico and later through the Chicano rights movement in the United States, ofrendas have also become a form of protest covering often marginalized victims, said Luis Fitch, a Minneapolis artist who has created Day of the Dead images for retail giant Target and the U.S. Postal Service.

In Los Angeles, site of some of the strongest enforcement actions, a group advocating for detained migrants planned for Sunday a prayer with Buddhist, Jewish and Protestant Christian rituals as well as altars commemorating those who died in detention, said the Rev. Jennifer Gutierrez, one of the organizers.

“There’s pretty high anxiety,” said Gutierrez, a United Methodist minister. “But also an atmosphere of coming together to help each other.”

Back at El Colegio High School, the half dozen altars with flickering candles, decorated candy skulls and a profusion of paper flowers commemorated local and global losses.

There were pictures of the children killed at a school Mass just 3 miles (5 kilometers) away, but also those who died crossing the U.S-Mexican border as well as victims of the terror attacks on 9/11, the war in Gaza and violence against Indigenous women.

“We try to keep our sources of spiritual strength always nourished,” said Susana De Leon, one of the traditional Aztec dancers who got the commemoration started at El Colegio.“When the community sees us dancing, they feel strengthened. They feel the love.”

Halloween and a declining Christian tradition coexist on All Saints' Day in Spain

MADRID (AP) — The sobriety of the Catholic tradition, by which on All Saints' Day graves are cleaned and flowers are brought to cemeteries to spend time with deceased loved ones, has given way in recent years to sweets, fake blood, and spider webs from one of the most iconic holidays in the United States.

Alicia Leon and Teresa Medrano
November 3, 2025

MADRID (AP) — Skeletons, ghosts, and monsters of all kinds took to the streets of many cities in Spain at nightfall to celebrate Halloween. The next morning, an older generation flocked to the country’s cemeteries to remember their dead.

The sobriety of the Catholic tradition, by which on All Saints’ Day graves are cleaned and flowers are brought to cemeteries to spend time with deceased loved ones, has given way in recent years to sweets, fake blood, and spider webs from one of the most iconic holidays in the United States.

As in many other parts of the world, instead of their own ancestral traditions, younger people have embraced the more commercial side of a celebration that originated from the pagan festival of Samhain, which honored the end of summer and the harvest. And it does not appear that they will follow in the footsteps of their elders.

The cultural change did not happen overnight, but is a consequence of the secularization of societies, explained José Bobadilla, a sociologist specialized in culture and religious diversity.

“Obviously, the process of a new, more Americanized culture has had an influence not only in Europe,” said Bobadilla, who noted that the current celebration, which is spreading throughout the world, “downplays the idea that it is a time to remember those who are no longer with us.”

The Almudena cemetery in Madrid, the largest in Spain with some five million people buried there, began receiving its first visitors early in the morning.

At the main entrance, several flower stalls waited with bouquets ready for those who left the arrangement of the graves to the last minute.

“We always come on (Nov) 1st,” said Alicia Sánchez, a 69-year-old retiree who lamented the loss of tradition due to a lack of interest among younger people.

“I don’t like Halloween because it’s not our holiday. But everyone has their traditions, and that should be respected,” she said.

Paz Sánchez visited her husband’s grave with his son, as they do on many other days. This time, however, they were surprised to see so few people despite it being the busiest day of the year.

“Maybe they don’t feel like getting up early to come to the cemetery,” said Sánchez, 87.

A few hours earlier, as in the last decade, Paracuellos de Jarama, a town about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) northeast of Madrid, dressed up for Halloween.

It started with just a few neighbors, but now dozens of houses are decorated with pumpkins and ghosts, there is a haunted passageway, and hundreds of people roam the streets trick-or-treating.

Miguel Izquierdo transformed his family home into a pirate ship with recycled wood for the hull and an old sheet as a sail. The lights, music, and 30 kilos (66 pounds) of candy, which ran out in less than two hours, made it one of the most popular.

After three years, they continue to participate “because of how much fun the children have,” said Izquierdo, 42, who runs an audiovisual production company. “We like it because it’s a party, because it’s a costume party, and because there’s candy.”

“I don’t dislike the party, but I think it’s not part of our traditions,” said Antonia Martín, 68, who celebrated Halloween – without costume – for the first time for her grandchildren.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Opinion
This All Souls’ Day, experience moments of connection with those who have gone before us

This is an intentional act of cultivating relationship with our ancestors.

People hold candles over a tomb decorated with flowers at a cemetery in Atzompa, Mexico, Oct. 31, 2023. In a tradition that coincides with All Saints’ Day on Nov. 1 and All Souls’ Day on Nov. 2, families decorate graves with flowers and candles and spend the night in the cemetery, eating and drinking as they keep company with their dearly departed.
(AP Photo/Maria Alferez)

November 1, 2023

By 

Christine Paintner

(RNS) — In Celtic tradition there are many moments considered to be a “thin time,” which means that heaven and earth feel closer and we might experience moments of connection to those who have gone before us in ways that we don’t usually.

These moments include the daily portals of dawn and dusk as the world moves from dark to light and back to dark again. They also include the eight threshold moments of the year, which are the solstices, the equinoxes and the cross-quarter days that fall between the solstices and equinoxes. Of these eight, Samhain, which falls on Nov. 1, is considered to be the thinnest time, when the ancestors and spirits walk among us. The door between the spiritual and the physical is even further open than at other times.

Samhain is the start of the dark half of the year. It is the season of rest, incubation and mystery. It is the season of dreamtime and the perfect time of year to open your heart to connect with those who journeyed before you. Winter invites us to gather inside, grow still with the landscape and listen for the voices we may not hear during other times of the year. These may be the sounds of our own inner wisdom or the voices of those who came before us.

Listen for the messages of the ancestors in those days especially — they will speak their wisdom through raven and stone, tree and rain, dreams and synchronicities. This is the language through which we receive these gifts and only need to open ourselves to them.

The Celtic feast of Samhain coincides with the Christian celebration of All Saints’ Day on Nov. 1 and All Souls’ Day on Nov. 2, which begin a whole month in honor of those who have died. We tend to neglect our ancestral heritage in our Western culture, but in other cultures, remembering the ancestors is an intuitive and essential way of beginning anything new. We don’t recognize the tremendous wisdom we can draw on from those who have traveled the journey before us and whose DNA we carry in every fiber of our bodies.

Ritual has a way of bridging the gap between the visible and invisible worlds and between the conscious and unconscious knowing. We can open ourselves to communication from our grandmothers and grandfathers. What we work on consciously through ritual and prayer has an impact in the world of the ancestors. Ritual is the intentional cultivation of relationship, but communication happens in spontaneous ways as well.

In Christian ritual and liturgy, there is the celebration on the Feasts of All Saints and All Souls. Some churches keep a Book of the Dead, in which the names of loved ones who died are written and kept near the altar so they may be remembered at Masses throughout November.

November is the month of the dead, and churches often have special Masses of remembrance throughout the month as well as setting up a special ancestral altar somewhere in the church space where members can bring photos, flowers and other offerings. Many churches also have votive candles available all year, which people can light either as a prayer for themselves or another or in remembrance of a loved one.

In medieval Europe, there were many practices for All Souls’ Day, including creating altars, celebrating requiem Masses, lighting candles and bonfires, visiting graves, ringing bells and making soul cakes, which were small, round, spiced loaves to commemorate the dead that were given out to people who came door to door.

We communicate with ancestors much in the way we would communicate with angels and saints — through dreams, visions, synchronicity, nature, ritual and imagination. We call upon them through prayer, we honor them through ritual offerings, and we ask them for guidance.

Henri Nouwen offers us this wisdom: As we grow older we have more and more people to remember, people who have died before us. It is very important to remember those who have loved us and those we have loved. Remembering them means letting their spirits inspire us in our daily lives. They can become part of our spiritual communities and gently help us as we make decisions on our journeys. Parents, spouses, children and friends can become true spiritual companions after they have died. Sometimes they can become even more intimate to us after death than when they were with us in life. Remembering the dead is choosing their ongoing companionship.

I especially love that final sentence: “Remembering the dead is choosing their ongoing companionship.” This is an intentional act of cultivating relationship.

The first fundamental blessing we can offer gratitude for is the gift of life itself. No matter what kind of family we came from, no matter how much suffering was caused, there is the fundamental impulse toward life that we can celebrate. We can give thanks for being here, being fully alive and even having the privilege of taking time to do this healing work: to explore spiritual practices and to ponder what makes our lives meaningful. Many of our ancestors never had that luxury.

Many worked very long hours for little reward and were never able to pause and ask themselves how their own generational connection could bring more wisdom to their lives.

I like to remember as well that in the midst of my ancestors’ struggles there was at least some resilience and courage developed that I have inherited. This is the second fundamental blessing we can offer gratitude for. I may never know what they went through exactly, but I can sometimes feel their sturdiness and how they endured. They too lived through times of war and plague and economic struggle.

Sometimes when I go outside at night and can see the brilliance of the stars, I remember that my ancestors also had moments of wonder and awe standing with their faces upturned toward the vast expanse of the universe. I remember that they too had moments of delight, of joy, of dancing, no matter how hard their lives were.

(Christine Valters Paintner is the author of “The Love of Thousands: How Angels, Saints, and Ancestors Walk With Us Toward Holiness” (Sorin Books), from which this column is adapted with permission. She is the online abbess for Abbey of the Arts, a virtual monastery offering classes and resources on contemplative practice and creative expression. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

MORMONISM IS A CULT

A real Joseph Smith photo — or not? Why do Mormons care so much?

The polarized response to the photo reveals less about Joseph Smith than it does about us.

Opinions abound about a newly released image of Joseph Smith Jr. If the claim is accurate, it is the only known photograph of the prophet. RNS photo illustration

July 28, 2022

By 

Jana Riess

(RNS) — On July 21, Mormons were rocked by news that a great-great-grandson of Joseph Smith had discovered a daguerreotype he believes to be the only known photograph of the prophet.

Almost immediately, the Mormon social media world exploded.

Everyone, it seems, has an opinion about this. Even before they had read the John Whitmer Historical Association Journal article that lays out the considerable evidence supporting the claim, every rando on the internet was suddenly an expert on death masks, facial recognition software and the conventions of 19th-century portraiture.

People are saying he’s either too old or not old enough. He’s either too weathered and craggy or he’s been unforgivably yassified.

And the usual: He’s either a charlatan who was out to have sex with your daughters and steal all your money, OOOOOOOOOR he’s an angelic paragon of everything that is good.

See! The photo proves it. It’s all right there.

 

Over the last week I’ve been fascinated by the response — and the vehemence of that response — from various quarters of the Mormon world.

Occasionally, legitimate questions are raised about the evidence for authenticity, like this excellent post at Ardis Parshall’s Keepapitchinin blog, urging caution about hasty conclusions.

But for the most part, Mormon social media has not been filled with people using the best tools available to analyze and evaluate historical evidence, but people defaulting to their previously held views of Joseph Smith.

Sometimes, those are reaffirmations of faith — assertions that whether or not the photo is genuine, Joseph Smith was a bona fide prophet and servant of God.

And at the other end of the spectrum, some people utilized the photo to underscore how Smith was a schemer and a pervert.

Among the people who appear to have budged in their prior assessments of Joseph Smith — people who actually changed their minds about him in some way because of the new image — are those who found the man in the photo, somewhat to their horror, more attractive than they expected.

Two of my favorite tweets were in this vein.

 

Meanwhile, there has been a growing Team Hyrum contingent. These people seem to agree the photo in question is probably a genuine daguerreotype made in Nauvoo in the 1840s and that it passed through the Smith family inside a locket for nearly 180 years. But they think the man in the image is Joseph’s brother Hyrum, who was killed by his side in 1844 and whose facial features appear similar, if their death masks are any indication.

All in all, the polarized response to the photo reveals less about Joseph Smith than it does about us.

Joseph Smith is a deeply divisive figure, and the same basic camps that existed in his own day to either revile or revere the man are alive and well in our own. He’s either a con artist or he’s a sainted martyr. A villain or a hero.

And in that sense, even if the daguerreotype is proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to be none other than Joseph Smith, it may make little difference one way or the other in how he is viewed. That’s because everyone who cares enough to have an opinion has already made up their mind.

AND HE STOLE THEIR HOLY UNDERWEAR FROM THE MASONIC INITIATION CEREMONY 

Mormonism and Freemasonry - Wikipedia

JOSEPH SMITH TABLE RAPPER AND SPIRITUALIST

Mormonism's Encounter with Spiritualism

Davis Bitton

Journal of Mormon History

Vol. 1 (1974), pp. 39-50 (12 pages)

Published By: University of Illinois Press

 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23285880

Utah’s Pioneer Day celebrates Mormons’ trek west – but there’s a lot more to the
history of Latter-day Saints and migration

The Utah holiday is a reflection of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ slowly changing identity, a historian of Mormonism and migration writes.

A couple rides on a float with a handcart during the parade for Pioneer Day, an annual Utah holiday, on July 24, 2019, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
July 22, 2022

By Jeffrey Turner

(The Conversation) — Each July 24, the state of Utah celebrates “Pioneer Day.” There are parades, rodeos, fireworks, a marathon, hikes and historical outfits, plus lots of red, white and blue – similar to the Fourth of July and other patriotic events in America.

Pioneer Day, however, commemorates something unique: the day Mormon migrants arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. The label “Mormon” refers to any church rooted in the teachings of founder Joseph Smith, although the largest of these, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has rejected the name in recent years.

The first Latter-day Saints to reach Utah had fled Illinois, more than 1,000 miles away. On July 24, 1847, after months on the trail, church president Brigham Young caught sight of the valley and proclaimed, “This is the right place.”

For Latter-day Saints, the holiday involves church activities like talks, dances, potlucks and sometimes reenacting pioneers’ experiences by walking along the “Mormon Trail” with handcarts. In Salt Lake City, there is a large parade called “Days of ‘47” with floats reflecting an annual theme related to pioneers.

As a historian who studies Mormon migration and immigration, I see the pageantry of Pioneer Day as a reflection of the church’s long, complicated relationships with race, nationalism and identity. Each year’s commemorations emphasize stories of hardship and heroism. However, they remember just one story of migration out of many in the diverse history of the church and the region.

Church on the move

Smith founded the LDS church in upstate New York in 1830. Ever since, its history has been one of movement.

Smith claimed to have received revelations and visions indicating that Latter-day Saints should gather to prepare for Jesus Christ’s Second Coming. The church taught that God would gather his people in a place called Zion – a word found in the Bible, often used to refer to Jerusalem or Israel – before Jesus’ return. By converting people to the LDS church and encouraging them to migrate together, 19th-century Latter-day Saints believed that they were building Zion.

KICKED OUT OF TOWN FOR POLYGAMY

In the faith’s first few decades, the LDS church changed headquarters several times, gathering in New York, then Ohio, then Missouri, then Illinois. Each time, their arrival prompted conflict with local communities that did not trust the new church – discrimination that sometimes broke into violence. After Smith, the founder, was killed by a local mob in 1844, Young led a large faction of Mormons on the long, difficult journey to Utah.

Western years

When Latter-day Saints arrived by the Salt Lake in 1847, the area was Mexican territory. The United States gained control of the territory the next year as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War and ceded Western lands to the United States.

It would be another half-century before Utah became a U.S. state, however. The territory was technically under U.S. control, but for the time being, Latter-day Saints celebrated their autonomy. As part of the effort to gather church members together, Young established a micro-loan system that financed converts’ migrations to Utah from both inside and outside the U.S.

Many did not trust the U.S. government, given the church’s previous experiences of discrimination. Nor did many Americans trust the LDS church, partially because of the practice of polygamy – which church leaders formally disavowed around the turn of the 20th century.

Some Americans in the 19th century considered Mormon immigrants to be racially nonwhite, although the vast majority were coming from Europe. Anti-immigrant sentiment was rising at the time, and critics sometimes conflated their fears about Mormon, Chinese and Muslim immigrants.

The U.S. federal government tried to stop Mormon immigration in a number of ways, such as forbidding people who supported polygamy from entering the country in 1891. Even so, hundreds of Latter-day Saints immigrated each year.
Overshadowed stories

Migration stories are a source of pride and identity for many Utahans, and Pioneer Day celebrations have a long history. Within two years of the first Latter-day Saints’ arrival in 1847, they started celebrating the anniversary with cannon salutes, music, bell ringing and speeches.

Later celebrations included reenactments. For the 50th anniversary in 1897, some celebrants reenacted part of the trek along the Mormon Trail and watched a procession of wagons and horse-drawn floats, a tradition that gradually formalized into the Days of ’47 parade.

A covered wagon caravan of Mormon emigrants trying to cross a river in 1879.
Corbis Historical via Getty Images

To some, Pioneer Day symbolizes exclusion and forgetting – especially the church’s impact on Native Americans. In a 2019 op-ed, documentary filmmaker Angelo Baca and historian Erika Bsumek wrote that Pioneer Day “represents a key moment in the history of the colonization of the American West,” which caused “Utes, Paiutes, Shoshone, Goshute and Navajos” to lose “their homes, lands, and even, in some cases, their families.”

Pioneer Day is also the anniversary of the arrival of Black people, both enslaved and free, whose experiences have often been overlooked in Utah history.

However, monuments and written records have helped spark discussion about how to remember their legacy during the holiday.

As Latter-day Saint membership has grown more globally diverse, Pioneer Day celebrations have included more diverse pioneer narratives from the faith’s history. In recent years, church programs have also emphasized stories of how “pioneers” are building up the faith all around the world, not only in Utah.

As Utah and the church continue to become more diverse, Pioneer Day participants will continue to recover histories of migration, displacement and courage that shape their identity in the present through their remembrances of the past.

(Jeffrey Turner, Ph.D. Candidate in U.S. History, University of Utah. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Some Mormons see a message in the Angel Moroni’s fallen trumpet




By Christopher James Blythe, Religion Dispatches March 24, 2020

AMERICAN NEW AGE (19TH CENTURY) NON CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALIST CULT OF JOHN SMITH, SPIRITUALIST, TABLE RAPPER, FRAUDULENT FREEMASON



On March 18, 2020, at 7:09 in the morning, residents of Salt Lake City and the surrounding counties of northern Utah awoke to a 5.7 magnitude earthquake that struck 10 miles outside the city. Fortunately, there appears to have been no loss of life, although there was some property damage throughout the area. The iconic Salt Lake City Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints faced only minor damage. The 12-foot angel standing on the building’s highest tower was shaken to such an extent that the trumpet once positioned to its lips was dislodged and plummeted to the base of the spire. Coincidentally, the building had closed on December 29, 2019, for renovation and a seismic upgrade.

A spokesperson for the LDS Church noted, “This event emphasizes why this project is so necessary to preserve this historic building and create a safer environment for all our patrons and visitors.” Individual members of the Church, however, looked for greater prophetic significance than offered in the statement on the building’s wellbeing.

Knowing the history of the temple and its iconic angel will better explain why the damaged statue might engender a sense of providence. The Salt Lake Temple is one of more than 150 temples, but it’s where Church leaders—apostles and prophets—meet weekly and hold prayer.

Brigham Young had seen the building in a vision shortly after the pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. He believed this temple would fulfill a verse in Isaiah that “in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.” Construction began in 1853. In 1892, the Angel Moroni was placed on its tower and a year after that the building was dedicated.

While an angel had appeared on the weathervane of the Nauvoo Temple in the 1840s, this was the first time the iconic figure of the trumpeting angel Moroni was used. Similar angels would later appear on nearly all the church’s temples across the globe. The figure recalls the appearance of the angel Moroni to an adolescent Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter-day Saint tradition, in 1820s New York. The angel directed Smith to the location of the Gold Plates that would become the Book of Mormon.

Before his death in the fifth century, Moroni, a proto-American Indian, had deposited these records near Smith’s home. (In the Latter-day Saint tradition, angels are deceased humans—not so distinct from the Roman Catholic understanding of Saints.) Latter-day Saints associate this appearance of Moroni with a verse from John the Revelator’s vision of “another angel fly[ing] in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.” Moroni serves both as a symbol of Latter-day Saint heritage but also of the Saints’ responsibility to preach the gospel in the last days.

When news that Moroni’s trumpet had been dashed from his hand, there was a predictably varied response among Latter-day Saints and others who looked for significance in the moment. Some religious critics of the Church of Jesus Christ suggested that Latter-day Saints should consider themselves divinely rebuked. Others drew on an obscure item of folklore (as much about what Latter-day Saints believe as an example of what they really believe) that held the statue would be animated and blow its horns at the Second Coming. This prophecy had now been proven false, they claimed.

It’s possible the most common response to the news were humorous suggestions that the red state of Utah had been divinely charged to give up its support for President Trump and the Republican Party. Brandon Dew tweeted, “Even Moroni is tired of Trump.”

Some called it “the ultimate mic drop,” while others posted images of Moroni with his arm still upraised alongside either Judd Nelson’s character from The Breakfast Club thrusting his fist into the air or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s winged character from Tooth Fairy.

And last but not least, Dwayne Johnson as the Salt Lake City Temple's Angel Moroni statue. (END) pic.twitter.com/Ws1JM1fp0Z
— Court Mann (@TheCourtMann) March 23, 2020

A more serious response came from Latter-day Saint prophecy enthusiasts who looked for prophetic and even apocalyptic meanings in the fallen trumpet. A popular meme included an image of Moroni without his trumpet and a passage taken from the Hebrew prophet Amos interspersed with commentary:

“That in the day that I shall visit the transgressions of Israel upon him I will also visit the altars of Beth-el: [Bet-is House] [el- is GOD] and the horns [trumpets] of the altar shall be cut off, and fall to the ground. *When the trumpet fell off from Moroni on salt lake temple today.”

While this sounded reasonable to many, the following day, several Latter-day Saint scholars of Hebrew had criticized the faulty reading of the passage and pointed out that horns referred to the actual shape of a Hebrew altar, not to a musical instrument.

Another popular interpretation among Latter-day Saints seeking a prophetic explanation has been that the missing trump is a sign that the church will stop its missionary outreach. One of Joseph Smith’s revelations declared, “Behold, I sent you out to testify and warn the people, and it becometh every man who hath been warned to warn his neighbor. … And after your testimony cometh wrath and indignation upon the people.” (D&C 88:81;88)

As a result, Latter-day Saints have looked for a time when their missionaries would be “called home” after which there would be an increase in natural disasters and disease leading up to the Second Coming. Two days later, COVID-19 brought about what some have already begun to see as the fulfillment of this prophecy with the Church’s announcement that “In the coming weeks, based upon world conditions, substantial numbers of missionaries will likely need to be returned to their home nations to continue their service.”

Rod Meldrum, author of Prophecies and Promises: The Book of Mormon and the United States of America, is particularly sure of this connection. On March 20, he is quoted as saying: “And so it begins. First Moroni’s trumpet is removed from the SLC temple, heralding the end of the preaching of the gospel to the world and the beginning of woes. Two days later this….”

Northern Utah has been preparing for a major earthquake for some time. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has done extensive work on the buildings surrounding the Salt Lake Temple, an area known as Temple Square. This includes the historic Tabernacle and Assembly Hall. An official statement noted that the earthquake caused no structural damage to the temple or other surrounding buildings.