Mormon Church and the transfer of Spanish genealogical records

The Mormons have held your genealogical data for decades

That a religious organization of American origin has access to the genealogical records of Spaniards is no secret. The agreement to digitize parish and civil archives has been in the works for at least twenty years, and local church authorities accepted it as a free service. The controversy erupts when the final destination of that data is recalled: the database of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as the Mormon church.

Free service or appropriation of roots?

The most critical stance holds that the real goal is religious: to symbolically baptize ancestors, a practice that is part of Mormon theology. The most suspicious even speak of an act of cultural appropriation. On the pragmatic side, others point out that these digitization programs are offered to dioceses at no cost, and that the result is public access to documents that would otherwise remain on paper and be forgotten. No public money is involved, at least not visibly, although the question of how much is paid or charged to maintain the service remains open.

Data for public scrutiny

Some go a step further and demand that all that information, if it is already in the hands of private entities, be made public for Spaniards. A personal search makes it possible to trace up to six generations of ancestors, with birth, marriage and death records. The paradox is served: what some consider a dangerous handover, others see as an opportunity to reclaim their own history.

Meanwhile, the underlying question remains unanswered: should a country's genealogical memory be managed by an institution with religious aims? And if so, in exchange for what?