SEATTLE – A gunman killed five people in Seattle on Wednesday – four at a cafe and another in a carjacking – before he apparently shot himself as officers closed in following a citywide manhunt, authorities said.Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney should use his stature in the Mormon church to block its members from posthumously baptizing Jewish Holocaust victims, Nobel-laureate Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and a top official from the Simon Wiesenthal Center say.
Their comments Tuesday followed reports that Mormons had baptized the deceased parents of Wiesenthal, the late Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter. Wiesel’s name appeared in a church database used to identify potential subjects of baptisms.
A spokeswoman for Romney said his campaign would not comment, directing all inquiries to church officials.
Posthumous baptisms of non-Mormons are a regular practice of the Mormon religion. Church members believe the ritual creates the possibility for the deceased to enter their conception of heaven.
Individual members can submit names, usually of deceased relatives, for proxy baptisms. The church has tried to improve its technology to block the process from including Jewish Holocaust victims. In this case, officials blamed an unidentified person.
“We sincerely regret that the actions of an individual member of the church led to the inappropriate submission of these names,” spokesman Michael Purdy said in a statement.
“These submissions were clearly against the policy of the church. We consider this a serious breach of our protocol and we have suspended indefinitely this person’s ability to access our genealogy records.”
The practice of baptizing Holocaust victims has long been offensive to Jews. After years of negotiations, Mormon officials have prohibited posthumous baptisms of Jewish Holocaust victims.
The controversy could put Romney in the uncomfortable position of having to directly address Mormon theology, a topic he has avoided in his current campaign. Many evangelical voters have expressed skepticism about Mormonism, and Romney, a former lay leader in the church, has rarely discussed his experiences in the church.
Romney “is now the most famous and important Mormon in the country,” Wiesel said. “I’m not saying it’s his fault, but once he knows, morally he must respond. … He should come out and say, ‘Stop it.’ ”
Wiesel, 83, is one of several Jewish leaders who has directly negotiated the issue with the Mormon church since the mid-1990s.
