Jewish leaders claim Mormons continue to posthumously baptize Jews and Holocaust victims, and will confront church leaders with a decade of frustration over what they call broken promises.

"We have proof, and we are bringing that," said Ernest Michel, chairman of the New York-based World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.

The Mormon church has long collected names from government documents and other records worldwide for posthumous baptisms. Church members stand in for the deceased non-Mormons, a ritual the church says is required for the dead to reach heaven. The church believes individuals' ability to choose a religion continues beyond the grave.

Michel plans to show posthumous baptism records to church officials in meetings Sunday and Monday. He says the records prove tens of thousands of Jews, including some who died in Nazi concentration camps, were posthumously baptized over the past 10 years and as recently as last month.

A 1995 agreement signed by Jewish leaders and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints called for an immediate halt to unwanted proxy baptisms. After evidence was found in the church's massive International Genealogical Index that the baptisms for many Jews - including Anne Frank - continued, the two faiths reaffirmed the agreement in 2002.

"Nobody asked me, nobody asked my cousin. It's ridiculous," Skydell said.

Jewish and Mormon leaders came to an amicable resolution Monday about the continued appearance of Jewish names on the LDS Church's genealogical index, used for the church's controversial practice of doing proxy baptisms for the dead.

Ernest Michel, chairman of the New York-based World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, called the meetings "warm and satisfactory."

Essentially the two groups affirmed their 1995 agreement, in which The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints agreed to discontinue vicarious baptisms for Jewish victims and most other Jews as well as remove their names from the giant computerized International Genealogical Index - unless they are direct ancestors of current church members. They also created a joint oversight committee to be convened within six weeks that will explore reasons why the names keep popping up on the list.

Mormon leaders claim it is due to an unmanageably large list with billions of names and overzealous members who are not following church President Gordon B. Hinckley's directive to limit their submissions to those in their own family lines.

Jewish leaders and the LDS Church will look for ways to more closely scrutinize the names of Jews and Holocaust victims submitted to the church for proxy baptism.

Representatives of the New York-based World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors came to Salt Lake City saying the church had broken a 10-year-old agreement to refrain from the practice. Officials of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints say the church has always kept its part of the understanding.

After meetings Sunday and Monday that both sides described as cordial, leaders from the two faiths reaffirmed the existing memorandum and formed a joint committee to resolve some remaining issues.

"We came to convince the church there has to be a change in their attitude about the posthumous baptism of Jews," said Ernest W. Michel, chairman of the Holocaust survivors group.

"We cannot say we have eliminated all the problems. They will have to be worked out. But in the spirit of this meeting, I am convinced they will be worked out."

Dear Ms. Campbell,

I enjoyed reading your well-written article in the Courant, but would like to expand upon the uses of the data gathered by the LDS Church. The Church PR version states that the names are catalogued and added to their geneaology records, so that members can perform proxy baptisms and endowments on behalf of deceased, nonmember ancestors.

In practice, however, MOST of the names gathered by the church are "run through the temples", that is, they are used for proxy temple ordinances by members who are in no way related to the deceased persons and who most likely know nothing about the deceased person in question. Additionally, the living descendants of such deceased persons, who most likely practice another religion (or none at all), are not even aware that their ancestors' names are being used in such proxy rituals.

The use of Holocaust victims has received the most prominent attention, because despite over a decade of promises, the LDS Church continues to perform proxy rites on behalf of Holocaust survivors. However, these victims are only a small proportion of the nonancestral (that is, those who are not direct ancestors of living members) names for whom proxy rites are performed in LDS temples. Even Hillary Clinton's late, very Methodist father has been "rebaptized" and endowed in the LDS Church.

The cemetary cataloguing effort is only one way the LDS Church obtains names for its files. Other missionaries offer to microfilm aging county death records....but only if the church receives a copy for itself. Other LDS missionaries labor at "name extraction", in which information is gleaned from newspaper obituaries and other public sources of record. No effort is made to determine whether these people have living descendants who are currently members of the LDS Church.

I have no qualms with LDS Church members performing these rites for their own ancestors, if they believe in the validity of such rituals. But dragging unrelated names into their religion, whether they are living or deceased, shows a blatant lack of respect for the wishes of those persons (since most presumably had a chance to join the LDS Church in life), as well as disregard for the feelings of the living descendant relatives. What if Brigham Young or Joseph Smith were posthumously made a Catholic or a Jew or a Moslem?

"I had read about the controversy regarding the Jewish deceased from a few years ago, but chose not to include it. The church says that people "on the other side" -- those who are already dead -- have the choice not to accept the baptism. It opens up a whole 'nuther can of worms, ethically speaking, to involve a person -- or a person's spirit -- in a church ceremony they did not choose during life. I didn't include the particular controversy over the Jewish deceased because at the time, as it appears from the news reports that the Mormons rather quickly apologized, and promised to back off.

I understand your concern about people being included in church rolls when they didn't choose that membership, themselves. It's not a practice I completely understand or would participate in. Speaking strictly personally -- and I hardly expect any one else to share this notion -- it's my religious thinking that if I'm dead, and someone tries to move me from one part of the Great Beyond to another, they will be sorely disappointed. To quote the great Popeye, I Yam What I Yam.

Have a good day.

Sincerely,

Susan Campbell"

Nazi hunter's name taken off list after receiving complaint from Simon Wiesenthal Center

In life, Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal was among the most famous Jews of the 20th century. In death, he wound up on a list of people eligible to be posthumously baptized as Mormons so they could enter heaven.

Bowing to protests from Jewish groups, The Church of Latter Day Saints said on Tuesday that it had removed Wiesenthal's name from its International Genealogical Index, a database of names of people who be could be baptized after death.

A church spokesman said the Nazi hunter's name was taken off the list after receiving a complaint from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a Jewish human rights group named in his honor.

'I don't think he needs help getting into heaven'

Rabbi Marvin Heir, the dean and founder of the group, said, "From their point of view they thought they were doing him a favor by making sure he can get into heaven. For us, it is very offensive. Simon Wiesenthal dedicated his whole life to Jews. I don't think he needs help getting into heaven."

In 1995, after the Wiesenthal Center learnt that the church was baptizing Holocaust victims posthumously, the church agreed to stop the practice and removed 400,000 names from the index.

Mormon Church spokesman Bruce Olsen said Wiesenthal was off the list. He also said it is policy "that members submit only names of their own ancestors for vicarious baptisms" and that the 1995 agreement was still in force.

PARIS (Reuters) - Pope Benedict was baptized at birth and will most likely be baptized again one year after his death, not by his Roman Catholic Church but by a Mormon he never met.

The Mormons, a U.S.-based denomination officially named the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), encourage members to baptize the dead by proxy in the belief they are helping the deceased attain full access to heaven.

Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Zedong, King Herod, Al Capone and Mickey Mouse have all appeared for a short time in the International Genealogical Index for proxy baptisms, said Helen Radkey, a researcher specialized in the IGI.

So Benedict looks set to join his predecessor John Paul and a centuries-long list of popes Mormons have baptized -- despite the fact that he, back when he was the Vatican's top doctrinal authority, ruled that Mormon baptisms were not even Christian.

Pope Pius XII was baptized three times and also "sealed" in eternal marriage to a fictional Mrs Eugenio Pacelli. Saint Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order of priests, was also "sealed" to a bogus wife. Catholic clergy do not marry.

Baptism: Completed
Baptism: 13 MAR 1998 PROVO
Endowment: Completed
Endowment: 10 JUL 1998 PROVO

January 11, 2004
Deseret Morning News
By Gary Mokotoff [Excerpts]
Posthumous baptism is a terrible insult to Jews

What could be more inappropriate than baptizing a Holocaust victim; a person who died for only one reason – he was a Jew. Yet Mordechai Anielowicz, the leader of the Warsaw ghetto rebellion, was posthumously baptized into the Mormon faith. He is not an isolated incident. Hundreds of thousands of Holocaust victims – men, women, children and babies – have been baptized. Is it the thought that Holocaust victims can be comforted in their afterlife by accepting the Mormon religion?

Some of my Mormon friends have told me the ritual is an act of love. While this may be true, something that is intended as an act of love that causes the receiver pain becomes an act of cruelty.

The bottom line is that no person has a right to involve someone else's family in their religion. As I have told many of my Mormon friends, to many Jews – including myself – "baptize" is the second ugliest word in the English language. The ugliest word is "gassed." The third ugliest word is "raped."

To many Jews, "baptized" has a greater emotional reaction because to them – and me – to posthumously baptize a Jew is to rape his soul.

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- In an effort to block posthumous rebaptisms by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Catholic dioceses throughout the world have been directed by the Vatican not to give information in parish registers to the Mormons' Genealogical Society of Utah.

An April 5 letter from the Vatican Congregation for Clergy, obtained by Catholic News Service in late April, asks episcopal conferences to direct all bishops to keep the Latter-day Saints from microfilming and digitizing information contained in those registers.

"This dicastery is bringing this matter to the attention of the various conferences of bishops," the letter reads. "The congregation requests that the conference notifies each diocesan bishop in order to ensure that such a detrimental practice is not permitted in his territory, due to the confidentiality of the faithful and so as not to cooperate with the erroneous practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."

Mormons have been criticized by several other faiths -- perhaps most passionately by the Jews -- for the church's practice of posthumous baptism.

Holocaust survivors said Monday they are through trying to negotiate with the Mormon church over posthumous baptisms of Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps, saying the church has repeatedly violated a 13-year-old agreement barring the practice.

Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints say they are making changes to their massive genealogical database that will make it more difficult for names of Holocaust victims to be entered for posthumous baptism by proxy, a rite that has been a common Mormon practice for more than a century.

But Ernest Michel, honorary chairman of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, said that is not enough. At a news conference in New York City on Monday, he said the church also must "implement a mechanism to undo what you have done."

"Baptism of a Jewish Holocaust victim and then merely removing that name from the database is just not acceptable," said Michel, whose parents died at Auschwitz. He spoke on the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi-incited riots against Jews.