Who can become a Mormon priest?
The Mormon Church has no paid clergy. Most boys in good standing are named deacons at age 12. (They act like altar servers in a Roman Catholic church, passing bread and water used in communion.) At 16, most boys become priests and can bless the sacrament. At 19, they’re ordained as elders and generally sent off for two years of missionary work. Women can serve as missionaries but are never priests. The church is led by a president who is considered a living prophet, a member of an unbroken chain of prophets including Joseph Smith and stretching back to Jesus Christ. The president governs the church with two counselors and 12 apostles, all males. All can receive divine revelation. In 1978, for instance, the church president said God revealed a need to end the practice of excluding blacks from the priesthood, even though the Book of Mormon describes dark skin as a divine mark of disfavor. What was Romney’s role in the church? Romney served two years as a missionary in France. In the mid-
