That report and others it has generated are "disappointing," according to the press release quoting Elder Christofferson, because "it inadequately explains and mischaracterizes not only our religious practice but also our cooperative records preservation work."

"The work going on in Russia is consistent with what we have been doing with archivists the world over for more than half a century," he said. "Countless numbers of irreplaceable records will be lost to posterity if they are not microfilmed," and the church provides access to billions of names, along with their birth and death dates, free of charge to anyone who seeks the information, he said.

The press release offered no other comment on payment to Russian archive officials for the names the church has gleaned from the town's records. Bills said the payments were "merely intended to reimburse the archive for its expenses." He said he couldn't elaborate on the arrangements between Russian officials and the church.

Past controversy

The church has come under fire within the past decade from Jewish groups who said the church's collection of the names of Jewish people, many of them Holocaust victims who were subsequently baptized by proxy, was an affront to their faith.

As a result, the church made an agreement in 1995 with a number of Jewish groups that it would no longer baptize Jewish Holocaust victims — other than direct ancestors of LDS members — and that it would remove such names from its International Genealogical Index (IGI) when it was made aware that they were still listed there.

Gary Mokotoff, publisher of Avotaynu, the International Review of Jewish Genealogy, said while "non-Mormons don't like this concept, in the case of Jews it's super sensitive. Baptism is a very ugly word to a Jewish person, far beyond Russian Orthodox or Catholic objection, because it reminds us of the persecution of Jews by Christians" who were anciently "given the choice of being converted to Christianity or being killed."

Mokotoff, who was directly involved in the 1995 agreement with the LDS Church, said he believes church officials agreed to stop the practice as a result of understanding that sensitivity. He said many people have subsequently "mischaracterized the agreement."