[The Wide Shot] FamilySearch and treasures from other churches

How — and why — will an organization based in Salt Lake City, Utah, help a 37-year-old man from the Philippines build his family tree? And for free?

At first, I myself could not believe the promise of FamilySearch, a 130-year-old nonprofit committed to “help millions of people around the world discover their heritage and connect with family members.” 

Visit their website and be surprised at the depth and breadth of their historical records, allowing us to unearth our family histories and build our family trees. 

My last name, Esmaquel, is rare — and I was surprised to find ancestors not only in our hometown of Majayjay, Laguna, but also in Libagon, Southern Leyte. One of them, Teodora Esmaquel, was born to Marcelino Esmaquel and Vinancia Yballar in Libagon on July 1, 1871, according to the “Philippines Births and Baptisms, 1642-1994” database of FamilySearch.

Did the Esmaquels hail from Majayjay, as our family has always thought, or did we come from Southern Leyte? Did an Esmaquel ancestor from Majayjay move to Southern Leyte and establish roots in the province? Or did the Esmaquels of Majayjay and Libagon simply get the same surnames from the Catalogo alfabetico de apellidos, the 1849 Spanish catalogue of 61,000 surname options for indios?

FamilySearch opens the mind to millions of possibilities.

It also provides a gateway into the life and mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which operates FamilySearch, formerly known as the Genealogical Society of Utah. 

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a Christian church organized by Joseph Smith and five others in New York on April 6, 1830. Church members believe that theirs is the “restoration of the true Church of Jesus Christ,” which “was taken away from the earth after the original twelve apostles of Christ died.”

(For more than a century, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was also called the “Mormon Church” because of their belief in the Book of Mormon. In 2018, however, Church President Russell Nelson said they should avoid referring to themselves as the Mormon Church and instead use the full name Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints so that it refers to Jesus.)

The Church of Jesus Christ comprises a small minority in the Philippines — nearly 868,000, according to their fact sheet. Compare that to more than 85 million Filipinos who belong to the Roman Catholic Church, once the state religion in this former Spanish colony.

Still, the Church of Jesus Christ’s genealogical records are priceless in a country where archives are poorly maintained and also threatened by typhoons, fires, and earthquakes.

I myself am Roman Catholic, but through FamilySearch, I find in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints one of the most indispensable treasures from other religions.

Nearly four months ago, I had the privilege of having a 34-minute online conversation with one of the top leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ, President Dallin Oaks, and his wife Sister Kristen Oaks. 

President and Sister Oaks granted this interview ahead of the dedication of their Urdaneta Philippines Temple on April 28, their third temple in the Philippines after the Manila Philippines Temple in 1984 and the Cebu Philippines Temple in 2010. Oaks, who once lived in the Philippines for two years as area president, returned to the country to preside over this dedication.

In our April 24 interview, the Oaks couple explained why genealogy is important for the Church of Jesus Christ.  

President Oaks said the Latter-day Saints or LDS believe that “baptisms and marriages need to be performed in mortality, but all of us have ancestors who died without the fullness of the Gospel.” 

Church members believe, “as the Bible itself teaches,” that an ordinance — defined as “a sacred, formal act or ceremony performed by the authority of the priesthood” — can be “performed by proxy.” This means living church members can perform such ordinances for deceased relatives or ancestors. 

“After people have made their own covenants in a holy temple, they’re encouraged to come back and serve as proxies for deceased relatives who did not have that chance in mortality. And so, FamilySearch is a way for people to identify their ancestors, and we make that service available whether a person is LDS or not,” said President Oaks. 

Through the information in FamilySearch, he said, we “give our deceased ancestors the opportunity of embracing these covenants and qualifying for these blessings.”

Sister Oaks explained: “We have what we call the plan of salvation, that we lived with God before we came. We come here to live with him and we’ll return to live with him. And it gives us the opportunity to be families forever with all those people: your great grandmother, your great grandfather — not just to know that they lived, but to know that you will live with them.”

No less than the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has benefited from the work of FamilySearch, even if the Catholic Church does not share the same belief about serving as “proxies” for deceased relatives.

In September 2019, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints turned over to the CBCP a treasure trove: digital records of Catholic parishes spanning 400 years, from 1614 to 2014, contained in around 14 million microfilmed images.

To protect them from the elements, the CBCP decided to store these records in the archives of the 413-year-old University of Santo Tomas, the oldest existing university in Asia that also enjoys pontifical status. 

Considering the importance that Latter-day Saints give to their ancestors, they themselves preserve ancestral records from different nations at all costs. 

“One thing that we always do when we copy records is preserve that record in a granite mountain vault that we have in Salt Lake City, so that if there’s a natural disaster that destroys local records, we have the records preserved here,” President Oaks said.

“You show us your records, we’ll make copies, we’ll preserve them in an indestructible place, and we’ll give you a copy for your use,” Oaks added, pointing out that they make these records available “without any charge.”

Months after my interview with the Oaks couple, on August 9, I witnessed another effort by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to engage communities in the Philippines, this time the indigenous peoples (IPs) and indigenous cultural communities (ICCs), over ancestral records.

In a Quezon City hotel, FamilySearch senior vice president Michael Colemere signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Jennifer Pia Sibug-Las, chairperson of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), for an oral genealogy project.

The MOU seeks “to provide the foundation for collaborative undertakings to pursue the gathering and preservation of oral genealogies and origin stories of the ICCs/IPs of the Philippines.” The process includes “the audio preservation of IPs’ languages as well as their genealogies through oral recitation and documented lineages.”

This is important, according to both parties, because the oral genealogies of ICCs/IPs “are among the most-at-risk records in the Philippines.” When clan elders or tribal leaders die, “the oral genealogy information they have often is lost with them,” according to the MOU. “The oral genealogies are the best expression of the ancestry of the ICCs/IPs.”

Colemere said during the MOU signing: “We are motivated by what we believe in our hearts and minds about the family. The family to us is the foundation of all organizations worldwide. We believe that as we connect our families to each other and connect our children to their ancestors and their heritage, we can strengthen the family, we can help strengthen communities, and we can help strengthen countries.”

“Most importantly, we believe that we can strengthen our relationships with one another and, ultimately, become a better people,” Colemere said. “We are simply trying to build the family tree of humanity so that we can help strengthen families and countries.”

It’s yet another proof that people of different religions or cultures can work together toward common goals, despite intractable differences.

How the Latter-day Saints engage people of other religions, through FamilySearch, is a form of interreligious dialogue, which goes beyond the stereotypes of roundtable discussions or of different religious leaders praying alongside each other.

There are at least four types of interreligious dialogue, according to the Catholic Church’s Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue: dialogue of life, dialogue of action, dialogue of theological exchange, and dialogue of religious experience.

The roundtable discussions often fall under the category of “dialogue of theological exchange,” while interfaith prayer sessions are considered forms of “dialogue of religious experience.” The “dialogue of life” refers to everyday interactions, treating each other with kindness despite religious differences.

I believe FamilySearch’s partnerships with the CBCP and NCIP fall under the category of “dialogue of action,” the type “in which Christians and others collaborate for the integral development and liberation of people.” In other words, it’s the type of dialogue where different religions work toward a common goal, or collaborate on specific projects, with the welfare of others in mind. 

Religious differences need not always lead to conflict. People of different religions, after all, share a common humanity. 

Let’s work hard to find each other’s treasures. Then, let’s get to work. – Rappler.com