LDS General Relief Society meeting goes back more than a century

SALT LAKE CITY — When women gather across the globe, for the LDS Church's general Relief Society meeting Saturday night, it will mark an annual event that dates back not just decades but more than a century.

Broadcast by satellite to church meetinghouses worldwide as well as by Internet streaming to individual homes, the 6 p.m. MDT session will feature messages from the general Relief Society presidency and a member of the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The annual meeting has for some time been held on the Saturday prior to the church's October general conference, with a similar meeting for LDS young women conducted just prior to April conferences.

The call for LDS women to gather in a large-scale setting first came in 1889, as stakes were asked to send representatives to what was described as a general conference of the Relief Society, to be held on Saturday, April 6, in the Assembly Hall on Temple Square. Nearly two dozen stakes were represented, with some traveling as far as 500 miles by train or carriage to attend.

Subsequent conference-type meetings were held in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, first semiannually, then just annually beginning in 1945. There were only a handful of interruptions — the 1919 influenza epidemic, the 1942-44 cancellations due to World War II and the 1957 Asiatic influenza outbreak.

The broadcast of the 1992 general Relief Society meeting marked the first time it was received on each of the world's six populated continents.

And in 1996, then-LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley used his address in the Relief Society meeting to announce publicly the new document/declaration "The Family: A Proclamation to the World."

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