Rev. Andrew Teal pays tribute to President Jeffrey R. Holland – Deseret News

The Rev. Andrew Teal was traveling on vacation in northern England on Saturday when he learned of the death of his dear friend, President Jeffrey R. Holland.

The Anglican priest was shocked and selfishly sad, he said, over the loss of a leader he previously had called “a pastoral genius” for his service as president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The two men spent the past seven years working together to build better interfaith relationships.

The Rev. Teal honored President Holland in an email to the Deseret News written from a service station in North Yorkshire, where he was vacationing with his wife Rachel at Fountains Abbey, which has no phone coverage or Wi-Fi.

“I’m weeping into my drink here at the service station, but they are tears of gratitude as well as sorrow,” the Rev. Teal wrote.

“Yesterday we learned of President Holland’s passing whilst we were in Pateley Bridge,” he added. “Both Rachel and I were shocked and, perhaps selfishly, sad.

“Then we thought of the relief from pain and loneliness that is the Lord’s gift to him; and of the glory of the Lord’s promises to our dear friend who proclaimed him in work and deed and was indeed faithful to the Covenant of the Lord.”

He also said their thoughts immediately turned to a reunion of President Holland with his wife, Sister Patricia Holland, who died in 2023.

“Most specifically we thought of the unspeakable joy that he and Sister Pat now know, and we rejoice in that — aware that the loss of his beloved Pat was a profound wound during his mortal life over the last two years.

“But he continued to serve here where he was needed, until the Good Shepherd scooped him to his heart to be reunited with Sister Pat.”

The Rev. Teal became friends with President Holland’s son, Elder Matthew S. Holland during the younger Holland’s sabbatical at Oxford in 2017.

President Holland traveled to Oxford’s Pembroke College for an interfaith conversation with the Rev. Teal in 2018.

At that time, the Rev. Teal said this of President Holland:

“I find him a wholesome, faithful and inspiring man, indeed ‘great’ but lacking all pomposity of grandeur — I love his humor and really respond to the ‘gift of tears’ which he so often receives and unashamedly shares. I … hope that this is the start of a fruitful friendship.”

It became more than that.

The Rev. Teal spent a semester as a visiting scholar at Brigham Young University’s Maxwell Institute in 2021 and the two men spoke frequently as their relationship deepened. The Rev. Teal delivered a BYU forum assembly address that fall.

“My closest friends,” he said, “have seen that my love for the Lord Jesus has grown exponentially because of my friendship with you, and I want to bring that to the beautifully diverse families of Christians and peoples of other faiths, so that we may travel together, even across steep mountains, which will lead to our being blessed together.”

The Rev. Teal said in his email after President Holland’s death that his tears at the news were tears of both gratitude and sorrow.

He said he and his wife recalled the 2018 night President Holland delivered a Christmas message at the Pembroke College Chapel about being summoned on Christmas Eve 1976 to a hospital where his father, Frank Holland, was dying. He spoke about how his grief turned in a juxtaposition with the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.

“In his sorrow he heard the cry of a new-born,” the Rev. Teal wrote in his email remembrance of President Holland. “That new-born wept for us just as now he weeps with joy as Jeff and Pat are reunited. The veil between us and celestial life is very thin, and their radiance enlightens us still.

“We will for ever be grateful for all they brought to us, not least the promise of a dawning glory so wonderful that eye has not seen — nor mind imagined — its glory.”

The Rev. Teal and President Holland were faithful intellectuals interested in real dialogue about their faith. The Rev. Teal had said their goal was to show that it is possible for people of different faiths to become friends who “listen carefully, attentively and respectfully, to ask questions with integrity and intellectual honesty of one another, without defensiveness or tribalism.”

The Rev. Teal closed his email about learning of President Holland’s death with a direct message for his friend.

“Thank you my tender friend,” he wrote. “We will always love you. Until we meet again, pray for us still as we will remember and love you.”