Clinton, Hatch discuss Holocaust baptisms

Despite a directive from LDS Church leaders to stop the practice, church members have continued posthumously baptizing Jewish Holocaust victims into the LDS faith.

A New York Jewish organization was so outraged that it asked U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton to intervene, prompting a meeting in early March between the former first lady and Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, an LDS Church member, the Associated Press has learned.

"It was a private meeting between two senators," Clinton said when declining to comment on what was discussed. Likewise, Hatch, through a spokesman, would not comment, calling it a private matter.

However, Ernest Michel, chairman of the New York-based World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, said he asked Clinton to intervene to force The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to abide by a 1995 agreement to stop the posthumous baptisms.

Proxy baptisms are conducted in LDS temples and offer salvation to the dead. Church members are baptized for deceased non-members, an ordinance the church says can be accepted or rejected by the deceased in the afterlife.

However, the practice has caused tension with members of other faiths, especially Jews, who find it arrogant and insulting.

The church has reaffirmed formally and informally the 1995 agreement in recent years only to have watchdogs find new Holocaust victims added to church's database of 400 million names — each of which has had, or will eventually receive, a proxy baptism.

Michel said that Clinton is "now involved in planning our next step."

"We are very hopeful that we will be able to convince the church to stop," he said. If not, his group will consider other options, including possible legal action.

Under the 1995 agreement, the church directed its members not to include the names of unrelated persons, celebrities and unapproved groups, such as Jewish Holocaust victims, for its "baptisms for the dead," according to documents provided by the LDS Church.

The church also assumes that the closest living relative of the deceased being offered for proxy baptism has consented.

"It did not guarantee that no future vicarious baptisms for deceased Jews would occur," church papers say of the agreement.

Church leaders, who were preparing for the Saturday funeral of Marjorie Pay Hinckley, wife of LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley, were not available for comment Friday.