Ailing Heir to Mormon Presidency Back at Post : Succession: If the 86-year-old senior apostle is too ill to assume leadership, it will leave church in ‘terrible quandary,’ officials say.

He is frail and cannot walk without help, but the 86-year-old heir to the mantle of prophet to more than 8 million Mormons worldwide is back at work.

Howard W. Hunter, president of the Council of the 12 Apostles, spent nearly six months recuperating from gallbladder surgery in May. He has made the trip from his home to the church’s Administration Building almost daily for the past two months.

The state of Hunter’s health is critical to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose president, Ezra Taft Benson, 94, has been frail for several years.

The church will not comment on Benson’s condition except in the vaguest terms. However, this summer, his grandson, Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Steve Benson said the church president is confined to his apartment under a nurse’s care. Age, he said, has stilled the elder Benson’s voice and clouded his mind.

Hunter’s health is also a concern because at no time in the faith’s 163-year history has a designated successor been too frail or sick to assume the presidency.

Such a situation would leave the church “in a terrible quandary,” and not just for ecclesiastical reasons, said D. Michael Quinn, author of an upcoming book on the Mormon hierarchy.

The governing First Presidency--made up of Benson and his two counselors--has become the center of the faith’s multibillion-dollar corporate structure, Quinn said.

Church presidents serve for life and are chosen through a strict tradition of apostolic succession based on seniority within the Council of the 12 Apostles. If the senior apostle, in this case Hunter, were mentally disabled, either through age or for some other reason, there is no doctrinal precedent for filling the role and the corporation could founder.

But the church may not be faced with that dilemma. Those close to Hunter, who suffered a recent bout of the flu, say that his overall health is relatively good. “He’s doing remarkably well,” said Hunter’s son, Richard, of San Jose, Calif. “I find it incredible, bouncing back the way he does.”

Richard Hunter and church spokesman Don LeFevre said that for the past month or so, the senior Hunter has been at the office “virtually every day,” often working six or seven hours.

“He has felt well enough to attend his regular meetings and to handle his responsibilities as president of the Council of 12 Apostles from his office,” LeFevre said in a statement. Hunter declined to be interviewed, as did other council members.

Hunter, a Boise, Ida., native and a corporate attorney who lived in Los Angeles for more than 30 years before moving here, has suffered a variety of ailments: a heart attack, bypass surgery and weakened legs that have forced him to use a walker. He spends much of his time in a wheelchair.

In 1989, Hunter lost his balance and fell while speaking at the church’s general conference. He pulled himself back to the podium and completed the speech.

His health problems and the loss of his first wife in 1983 led to a bout with depression. He remarried in 1990, at age 82.

Hunter requires help getting into his walker, Richard Hunter said, although sometimes he can push himself up from a sitting position.

His most serious problems came last spring when he went into the hospital for a gallbladder operation. Hunter’s condition deteriorated after the May 10 surgery and he spent four weeks in the hospital.

“Of course, we all would have hoped the recovery would have happened more quickly,” Richard Hunter said. “But before the surgery, he was told then that he wouldn’t be doing what he’s doing now, so you have to measure by that.”

Virtually every conversation about Hunter includes the caveat, “For a man of his age . . . “ It is no secret that his 86 years have left him physically frail, although apparently mentally sound.

Hunter was named to the council in 1959. If he becomes president, he will be the first Mormon leader born in the 20th Century.

Gordon B. Hinckley, 83, Benson’s first counselor, follows Hunter.

Since church founder Joseph Smith’s murder in 1844, the 11 presidents before Benson averaged 85 years of age at death. The average age today of the three-member First Presidency and the Council of the 12 Apostles is 74.

When a church president dies, the First Presidency is dissolved and the council and former counselors meet in the Salt Lake Temple to ordain the new president. He picks his counselors, and the trio immediately execute a variety of documents that ensure a smooth transition.

That could not happen if the senior apostle were mentally incapacitated, Quinn said. In the 19th Century, the church was able to operate without a First Presidency, and did so on three occasions. It would be more difficult, if not impossible, for that to happen now.

Given his understanding of Hunter’s health, Quinn said a change in leadership now would be relatively uneventful.