Politics & Government

Former Walpole Police Sergeant Kenneth Hutchins to Lead Mormon Prayer at Republican National Convention

Hutchins will give the opening prayer on the last day of the Republican National Convention.

Kenneth Hutchins, a retired police officer in Walpole and Northborough, and former stake president in the Mormon church, will offer the invocation before Mitt Romney formally accepts his party's nomination for president next Thursday at the Republican National Convention.

The news about Hutchins was first confirmed Wednesday evening in an article in the Deseret News, a Salt Lake City-based commercial newspaper owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

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Hutchins, 71, counseled Romney when the politician was a stake president in the Boston area in the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to the Huffington Post. The role is similar to leading a Catholic diocese.

According to the Salt Lake City-based newspaper, Romney's son, Tagg, called Hutchins Monday morning to ask him to lead the invocation.

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Raised in Walpole, the former sergeant at the Walpole Police Department became president of the Boston church stake after Romney left his position in 1994 to run for the U.S. Senate. He was in the position through 2003, then became mission president for the church in Tampa, Fla., overseeing missionaries from around the world who came to proselytize in the Tampa area.

When Hutchins left Massachusetts, he also left his career as chief of Northborough Police Department, a job he held since 1980.

In an interview with the newspaper, Hutchins called the chance to offer the invocation at the convention, which is Monday through Thursday at the Tampa Bay Times Forum, an "honor." Currently battling cancer, he said the opportunity lifted his spirits.


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