Gordon Hinckley was the 15th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - more familiarly known as the Mormons - and as such was regarded by the church's members as a prophet.

During his presidency Hinckley presided over a notable expansion of the church's membership from about 9 million to nearly 13 million.

Sprightly and industrious, he was an easy communicator who enhanced the media profile of Mormonism by readily appearing on TV chat shows, making the Church's vast genealogical databases available online and flying tirelessly all over the world, even in old age.

Hinckley was keen to align Mormonism with mainstream Christian denominations, despite their very substantial doctrinal differences, and he sought to downplay some of the aspects of Mormonism which seemed most strange to outsiders. As part of a multimillion-dollar PR campaign he changed the church logo to enlarge the words Jesus Christ in the official name and helped the Church to shake off its reputation as a polygamous cult.

He embarked on an ambitious programme to build more “temples” - the Mormon term for ceremonial buildings, not to be confused with chapels for worship - increasing their number from 47 to 124 []during his presidency.

Gordon Bitner Hinckley was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1910, the son of a businessman and a teacher. In 1928, after high school, he started to study English at the University of Utah. On graduation he toyed with the idea of a career in journalism but instead became a church missionary, and at 23 he was posted to London in 1933, where he often preached at Speaker's Corner.

Returning to the US after two years, he was able to explore his journalistic ambitions when he was appointed executive secretary of the Church's radio, publicity and missionary literature committee. Over the ensuing two decades he took charge of the image of Mormonism.

From 1951 to 1958 Hinckley moved to a role that was to inform the second notable achievement of his tenure as president - working for the missionaries committee. Drawing on his experiences in London, he called for better materials and more resources for missionaries. The Church's membership grew steadily, especially in Latin America and that outside the US overtook that within the US in 1996.

In the early 1960s Hinckley entered the upper echelons of the church and was able to exert real influence. First he was an “apostle” in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Then, from 1981 he became one of the two counsellors in the so-called First Presidency. In his 15 years in the First Presidency Hinckley served as a counsellor to three presidents. He was appointed second counsellor to President Spencer W. Kimball in 1981 - his fellow counsellor at the time was Marion G. Romney, a cousin of the father of current Republican candidate hopeful Mitt Romney.

Despite technically ranking as the third most senior official, Hinckley found himself taking many of the day-to-day decisions because Kimball and Romney both had long periods of ill-health. He then served as first counsellor to Ezra Taft Benson and Benson's successor Howard Hunter, before automatically ascending to the presidency, aged 84, upon Hunter's death in 1995.

Once he was no longer merely the Church's de facto leader, Hinckley was able to promote his policies of church expansion and media coverage more overtly by becoming the organisation's public face. In this role he spoke in favour of George Bush's War on Terror and again in 2003 in support of the Iraq war. A year later Bush rewarded him with the US's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

During his period as leader Hinckley had to steer the Mormon Church through a number of controversies. On one occasion it was duped into buying forged documents purporting to be written by the Mormons' founder Joseph Smith - whom Hinckley's grandfather had known. The Church continued to be intolerant of dissent and dissenting members were excommunicated. The Mormon Church also devoted some of its huge wealth to funding political campaigns to ban same-sex marriage.

Hinckley established a Perpetual Education Fund for young church members in developing countries and sat as a trustee on the Brigham Young University in Utah.

He also published several books on the Mormon faith, most recently One Bright Shining Hope: Messages for Women (2006); in the same year he became the oldest leader in the 175-year history of the Mormons.

Hinckley's wife, Marjorie Pay, predeceased him in 2004, and he is survived by their three daughters and two sons, as well as 25 grandchildren and 38 great-grandchildren.

Gordon Hinckley, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was born on June 23, 1910. He died on January 27, 2008, aged 97