Mormon Next in Line for Top Church Post Is 88 Years Old and Ill

Marion G. Romney, the man next in line of succession to newly appointed Mormon Prophet-President Ezra Taft Benson, is 88 and confined to his home by illness--and church officials say they do not know what will happen if he outlives Benson.

“The Lord will tell us what to do,” said Jerry Cahill, a spokesman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In the last two years, Romney was an inactive counselor to President Spencer W. Kimball, who died Nov. 5. Church officials have described Romney’s illness as the infirmities associated with old age.

Possible Alternative

The solution, if needed, might be handled in much the way the church did this week in its naming of Romney as president of the church’s Council of the Twelve Apostles.

Romney was named to the post last Monday, but the church simultaneously named Howard W. Hunter the acting president in Romney’s stead.

Hunter, just turned 78, is third in seniority on the apostolic council behind Benson, 86, and Romney and is therefore the likeliest successor to Benson.

Hunter studied law in Los Angeles and was a corporation lawyer in Southern California before going to Salt Lake City in 1959. He would be the first Mormon president to have been born in the 20th Century.

Born in Boise, Ida.

Born in 1907 in Boise, Ida., Hunter moved to California in 1928. He was graduated in 1939 from Southwestern University Law School and entered corporate law. While serving as president of the church’s Pasadena stake, or region, he also chaired the church’s in-house welfare programs in the Los Angeles area.

The 475,000 Mormons in California make the Latter-day Saints one of the largest non-Catholic denominations in the state.

The next men in line for president of the church--if leaders adhere to the tradition of seniority--are Gordon B. Hinckley, 75, who was made an apostle in 1961, and Thomas S. Monson, 58, appointed to the council in 1963.

Counselors Chosen

Benson, who could have selected anyone to be his co-administrators in the new First Presidency, picked both Hinckley and Monson to be his counselors. Neither man loses his place in the line of succession by being a part of the ruling trio.

Although Benson is hampered a bit by arthritis and the effects of a hip operation a few years ago, he is said to be in good health for his age.

But if Romney were to outlive Benson, the church would be faced with an unprecedented situation. The idea of retiring very old church officials to an emeritus status has been introduced into the Quorum of the Seventy, but not into the next administrative level above it, the Council of the Twelve Apostles.