President Obama meets with leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including President Henry Eyring (L), at his hotel in Salt Lake City, Utah April 2, 2015. Obama is visiting Utah for the first time as president. Photo by REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst.
* EDITORS: This photo can only be used with RNS-OBAMA-MORMON, originally transmitted April 3, 2015.

SALT LAKE CITY — The leader of the free world met Thursday (April 2) with several top leaders of the Mormon world.

Shortly after President Barack Obama landed at Hill Air Force Base, he had a private meeting at the Sheraton Hotel in Salt Lake City with Henry B. Eyring and Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and apostles L. Tom Perry and D. Todd Christofferson.

White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz said, “The President is pleased to meet with top LDS leaders as so many presidents before him have done.”

Schultz said they discussed the church’s long record of service, including its work on disaster relief and other humanitarian issues, and the need to fix the broken immigration system.

He added they discussed the need to forge more common ground across differences and to promote service to neighbors, both in the United States and around the world.

LDS spokesman Eric Hawkins said LDS President Thomas S. Monson, 87, skipped the meeting with Obama to preserve his strength for the church’s General Conference this weekend.

“President Monson remembers fondly his visit to the White House to present President Obama with his personal family history in 2009. Because of the need to preserve his strength for this weekend’s General Conference, it was felt that the logistics of meeting away from Church offices, with the walking and the waiting periods associated with a presidential visit, would regrettably not be conducive to President Monson’s participation,” he said.

(Thomas Burr, Lee Davidson and Robert Gehrke write for The Salt Lake Tribune)

KRE END BURR