After awhile, the men began to find points of agreement, and he believed he'd seen a "miracle in unity" occur. Waiting for then-church President Harold B. Lee to announce a consensus decision, he was startled to hear him table the discussion after noting he felt "someone in the room who is not yet settled."

Afterward, he observed a member of the Quorum of the Twelve approach President Lee and thank him. With emotion stirred at the memory, President Eyring said he remembers thinking, "We're in another kind of thing here. This (church) is what it claims to be, the true Church of Jesus Christ. Revelation is real here, even in what you call the business side" of church operations.

"President Lee taught me a great lesson" in dialogue, "that we can be open, direct and talk about differences in a way you can't anywhere else. No one is trying to win or make our arguments dominate. We just want to do and to say what is right."

President Eyring is the latest in a triad of Harvard-trained leaders called to serve in key positions by President Hinckley. Presidents recently named at church-owned BYU-Idaho and BYU-Hawaii are both Harvard Business School graduates.

In recent months, President Eyring represented the church in interfaces on highly public issues that involved some controversy. Recently, in Cedar City, he was the church spokesman in issuing an apology to descendants of those murdered 150 years ago in the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Some 120 non-Mormon immigrants traveling toward California were killed on the order of local church leaders who commanded an LDS militia.

During a memorial service at the grave site of some of the victims, then-Elder Eyring read a prepared statement by the First Presidency acknowledging that local leaders led and carried out the murder of unarmed civilians. The statement expressed "profound regret" for the massacre, which has long been a source of historical dispute and embarrassment to the church.

Elder Eyring, along with Elder Russell M. Nelson, his colleague in the Quorum of Twelve, also were assigned last summer to visit with the Rev. Al Sharpton, who made a public political comment aimed at presidential candidate Mitt Romney, suggesting Latter-day Saints do not believe in God.

In a telephone conversation with the two apostles, Sharpton apologized. The two church leaders accepted the apology and said the matter was closed.

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Contributing: Twila Van Leer and Nicole Warburton