The Mormon church is gaining respect and converts, its president said Saturday at the semiannual conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The church's membership is reaching 12 million, said Gordon B. Hinckley, with 5.2 million in the United States alone. It is the nation's fifth-largest Christian denomination, according to the National Council of Churches.
"We are now a great international family, living in many nations and speaking many languages," said Hinckley, whose words were translated into 66 languages — eight more than last year.
But Hinckley said perhaps as important was the growing respect for the church, whose members were expelled by force from two states before settling in July 1847 in what is now Utah.
On Thursday, the Illinois House of Representatives passed a resolution of regret for the forced expulsion of Mormons from Nauvoo, Ill., in 1846 after a mob killed the church's founder, Joseph Smith, in jail.
Hinckley called it a "magnanimous gesture" that mirrored the 1976 action by then-Gov. Christopher Bond of Missouri, who revoked the "cruel and unconstitutional extermination order" approved against Mormons in 1838.
"These and other developments represent a most significant change of attitude toward the Latter-day Saints," Hinckley said.
More than 21,000 faithful gathered at the downtown Conference Center to hear Hinckley's comments opening the 174th General Conference.