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."

Elder D. Todd Christofferson, a member of LDS Church's Presidency of the Seventy, said despite "intense emotions," talks were respectful and enriched the relationship between the faiths.

"We feel ourselves to be closely aligned brothers and sisters in many ways and in common beliefs," he said. "I don't know that there's a group we feel more akin to, to be honest. I think that's one of the reasons we can sit down like a family and talk to each other."

The LDS Church has long collected names of deceased people from government records and other documents for vicarious baptism. According to church doctrine, people live beyond the grave and must be baptized to reach heaven. Church members perform the ceremony on behalf of the dead in temples worldwide.

Some of the issues the committee intends to discuss have to to do with the church's International Genealogical Index containing some 400 million names.

A decade ago, the church removed the names of some 380,000 Holocaust victims from the public database and issued a directive to members to submit only the names of their own ancestors for proxy baptism.

Elder Christofferson acknowledged that some Jews and Holocaust survivors were "probably" inadvertently added to the index since 1995. The committee, which could start meeting within six weeks, will try to determine the number.

"What we're particularly looking at, at this point, is how do names get into the database that are unrelated (to the person submitting them) and by our policy shouldn't be there," he said.

David Elcott, American Jewish Committee director of U.S. interreligious affairs, said there may be some chinks in the 1995 agreement, but as of Monday, "there's nothing here that has changed substantivally from 10 years ago. We're all on board in the same place."

Jewish and LDS Church leaders previously reaffirmed the agreement in 2002.

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