Joseph F. Merrill - Mission President

Mission President

When he left in 1933 to serve as president of the European Mission of the church, Merrill passed his fiscal philosophies on to the missionaries serving under him. He succeeded John A. Widtsoe in this office. One of them, future church president Gordon B. Hinckley, cited Merrill’s influence as a major factor in his financial thinking. J. Wyley Sessions called Merrill the “most economical, conservative General Authority of this dispensation.”

Despite the hard times he saw during his tenure as commissioner, Merrill took great joy in his work. Upon his call as commissioner he said:

"Again may I say that I believe there is no kind of education in the world that is so fine and so elevating and so good and so important as religious education. And I believe that nowhere in the world is there a system of religious education that is equal in its quality, in its thoroughness and in its comprehensiveness to the system of education that is being undertaken in this Church. The time will come, I verily believe, and before very many years, when week-day religious education will be offered to every high school boy and girl, to every college and university boy and girl in this Church."