Public fears that a "gigantic temple" would block the view of one of Honduras' most famous Catholic basilicas has led The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to look for a new location for the Tegucigalpa Honduras Temple.
The church's plans to build a temple in Honduras were announced June 9, 2006, and ground was broken a year later at a site that is about 2,000 feet away from the Our Lady of Suyapa Basilica. The LDS Church purchased the land about 15 years ago, according to a local church leader, Luis Duarte, who was quoted in an article in the Honduran daily newspaper La Tribuna. The site is across the street from the National Autonomous University of Honduras, the largest university in Honduras.
"People saw (the temple being built so close to the basilica) as a provocation," Bishop Darwin Rudy Andino Ramerez, auxiliary bishop of the Tegucigalpa Catholic Archdiocese, told La Tribuna, "but we have not seen it that way and are in dialogue with them because a representative from the (LDS) church headquarters in the United States of America came to Honduras to talk. But I do not know what decisions they have reached."
When final permits were not forthcoming, the LDS Church began looking for a new temple site. "No decision has been made yet (where the new temple site will be located); the church will make an announcement when a place is found," said Duarte in the La Tribuna article.
E-mail: mdegroote@desnews.com