The Dublin Ireland Stake - the first-ever in the Republic of Ireland - was organized March 12 under the direction of Elder Graham W. Doxey of the Seventy.

Elder Doxey, second counselor in the Europe North Area presidency, was assisted by Pres. Steven Jensen of the Ireland Dublin Mission and Elder C. Raymond Lowry, regional representative. (Elder James E. Faust of the Council of the Twelve was originally assigned to be in attendance, but due to the death of President Howard W. Hunter, he was unable to be with the Irish Saints.)The conference sustained Liam Gallagher as stake president. Pres. Gallagher, 32, joined the Church seven years ago. He and his wife, Carmel, are parents of six daughters. He is employed as a distribution manager.

Pres. Gallagher's counselors are Charles Keogh and Anthony O'Connor. Pres. Keogh, a gardener, is 42 and has been a member of the Church since 1982. He and his wife, Ann, have five children. Pres. O'Connor works for Ireland's main telecommunications utility as a technical officer. He and his wife, Ann, were baptized in 1977 when he was in his mid-20s. They are the parents of eight children.

Among the congregation were some who had served as mission presidents and missionaries in Ireland.

The events reminded many of another auspicious episode of nearly a decade ago. Elder Neal A. Maxwell of the Council of the Twelve came to Ireland during 1985 and dedicated the land for the preaching of the gospel. At that time, Elder Maxwell prayed that the Lord would "look with fresh favor upon all of Ireland to the end that this Emerald Isle will know further greening through the fullness of the restored gospel."

Many felt that the establishment of this new stake was further evidence of the "gospel greening" envisioned by Elder Maxwell.

The formation of the stake comes nearly 155 years after the first missionaries came to Ireland. According to William Stewart, a member of the long-established Belfast Northern Ireland Stake, who has a deep interest in Church history, the first missionary was Reuben Hedlock, who came to Belfast in May 1840. He did not perform any baptisms in the country. (He later became known for making the woodcuts for the Book of Abraham facsimiles found in the Pearl of Great Price.)

In July of the same year, Elder John Taylor, later the third president of the Church, arrived in County Down where he preached on the steps of Newry Courthouse. A few days later, on July 31, he was journeying on foot with a man called Thomas Tate. When they came to Loughbrickland, 10 miles north of Newry, Thomas Tate expressed a desire to be baptized. (Lough is a Gaelic word meaning "lake.") Both men went down into the serene waters of Loughbrickland, and thus Thomas Tate became the first person to be baptized in Ireland in this dispensation. (It was at Loughbrickland that Elder Maxwell pronounced the dedicatory prayer in October 1985.)

The first branch of the Church in Ireland was opened in Hillsborough, near Belfast, in the autumn of 1840. The first branch in Dublin was opened in 1850.

The modern development of the Church in the Dublin area began with a group of German pork butchers who came to the city in the second decade of this century. Many of these people eventually emigrated from Ireland to California and became members of the Huntington Park Ward.

Currently, there are around 2,300 members of the Church in the Republic of Ireland, with about 1,700 of them living within the boundaries of the new stake. (There is also a district in Cork. Over the years, growth has been slow - but steady.)

With the organization of the stake there is a renewed optimism that the late Elder Mark E. Petersen's prophecy that "Ireland will blossom as the rose" is now coming to pass.