Carter, who leads a Sunday school class at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, yesterday said it was the first time he was late due to the death of Jeremy Carter, 28, just hours earlier.
No cause of death was immediately given.
"But the fact that he appeared at all was the real message," the report cited parishoners as saying.
"I'm not surprised," Maranatha member Jan Williams said.
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Earlier this month, the 91-year-old Nobel peace laureate and global humanitarian disclosed that he appears to have been cured of cancer.
After undergoing treatment, there were no signs of melanoma that doctors had found on his brain.
Carter, a Democrat and one-time peanut farmer and former Georgia governor, served one term as US president, from 1977 to 1981.