Mormons baptize Daniel Pearl in proxy ritual *

The last words of the Los Angeles-raised reporter for the Wall Street Journal, before he was murdered by his captors in Pakistan in 2002, were "I am Jewish." His mother, Ruth Pearl, tells the Jewish Journal it was "inappropriate and insensitive to posthumously baptize him." The Jewish Journal has been reporting recently on the Mormons' controversial proxy baptisms of Jews. Marianne Pearl, Daniel's wife, called the act “a lack of respect for Danny and a lack of respect for his parents.” From the Jewish Journal:

The rite was discovered by Helen Radkey, a former member of the Mormon church who has become a whistleblower on such activity.

Only Mormons have access to the church’s genealogy database, which also can be used to submit a deceased person’s name for proxy baptism.

The discovery comes in the same month that it was discovered that the parents of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal were posthumously baptized last month, and Anne Frank was posthumously baptized earlier this month.

Also earlier this month, the names of the father and grandfather of Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel were found to have been submitted for proxy baptism.

* Update: The Boston Globe, the original media source for the story, says the proxy ritual was carried out by members of a Mormon temple in Idaho. So I changed my headline to not say it was an act of the "Mormon Church."

Photo: LA Observed