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Mormon Church Posthumously Baptizes Anne Frank, Again

Anne Frank
(Credit: Annefrank.org.uk)
Anne Frank
(Credit: AnneFrank.org.uk)

The Mormon Church believes they can baptize people after they have died and they decided to posthumously baptize Anne Frank, reports the Huffington Post. What is even stranger, this is not their first attempt.

Anne Frank was a German-born Jew who was murdered in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The diary that she kept made her a symbol of the Holocaust.

According Mormon belief, a posthumous baptism allows for a deceased person to receive the Gospel after they have already passed away. They Mormon church believes souls can choose to accept or reject the baptismal rites. The church also proclaims that the these rights are not intended to offend anyone, according to Haaretz.com.

Helen Radkey, who is a former Mormon Church member found that the church was planning the baptism on a Mormons-only database. It is used to find genealogy and also to submit names of deceased people so they could be posthumously baptized, the Huffington Post reports.

Strangely enough, the Mormon church has tried to baptize Anne Frank once before. In fact, she has been submitted to be baptized almost a dozen times.

Their attempts were mostly unsuccessful since Mormons promised Jewish leaders they would limit baptisms of this sort only to their direct descendants. Partly due to the fact that Anne Frank was a young girl when she died, she has no descendants whatsoever. As a result, the Mormon church has no right to be baptizing Anne Frank.

She is not the only Holocaust victim that Mormons have tried to baptize. The database listed Elie Wiesel, author of “Night” and Nobel Peace Prize winner, to be “ready” for a posthumous baptism. Wiesel, however, is alive and has openly campaigned against the Mormon church doing baptisms on Holocaust victims.

According to the Huffington Post, Wiesel just recently asked Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who is of the Mormon faith, to speak against the Mormon church for doing posthumous baptisms.

Romney has refused to comment.