to areas of the world where there were no patriarchs in order to bestow patriarchal blessings upon worthy Latter-day Saints. For example, he gave 139 blessings in 16 days in Australia in 1966. Smith regularly spoke in the church's general conferences, but was only rarely assigned to visit local stakes of the church. In 1979, Smith was released from active duties and designated patriarch emeritus. The published reason for the change as noted in the church's Ensign magazine: "Because of the large increase in the number of stake patriarchs and the availability of patriarchal service throughout the world, we now designate Elder Eldred G. Smith as a Patriarch Emeritus, which means that he is honorably relieved of all duties and responsibilities pertaining to the office of Patriarch to the Church." As evident in the video archive of the conference and as noted in other sources, the exact wording in the conference itself was that Smith was "honorably relieved—not released—of all duties and responsibilities..." After his release Smith often spoke at firesides, where he displayed artifacts from Joseph and Hyrum Smith's lives. Smith was considered an emeritus general authority of the church after he was relieved of his duties. He remained an ordained patriarch and was still permitted to give patriarchal blessings. Throughout his life, he gave almost 20,000 patriarchal blessings. However, he was no longer sustained by the church as a "prophet, seer, and revelator" as he was from 1947 to 1979. He was sustained simply as "patriarch emeritus" in the October 1979 and April 1980 general conferences, and mentioned only with several other men as "emeritus General Authorities" during the sustaining in the October 1980 conference. Following the October 1980 sustainings (the transcript of which notes "a call of 'no' from several in the congregation" in opposition to the sustaining of Spencer W. Kimball as church president), the practice of sustaining the church's highest officers at every conference was temporarily abandoned, replaced instead with specific mention of only those offices that had changed since the last conference. This pattern was largely followed until the April 1985 conference, at which the sustainings returned to the previous form of presenting the president of the church, First Presidency, and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for sustaining whether or not a change in membership had occurred. At this point, Smith was not mentioned specifically, but included with "All other members of the First