Mss President,
The International Association of Free Thought (AILP), of which the National Federation of Free Thought (FNLP) is one of the founding members, has just sent a letter to the president of the Church of Jesus-Christ of the Latter-day Saints to ask him to direct the cult-related Family Search International to stop “the identity of all deceased persons known to him […] if it has the effect of enrolling the deceased atheists, agnostics, deists, free thinkers or members of other religions in the caravan of Latter-day Saints, In defiance of their own respect and without their families knowing.”
However, by a decision no. 2013-105 of 25 April 2013, the French National Commission for Information Technology and Freedoms (CNIL) authorised Family Search International to retain “[…] civil status documents and census documents under the conditions described above, pursuant to Article 36 paragraph 3 of the Law of 6 January 1978 as amended […]”, on the other hand, to be transferred “[…] to the United States of [s] personal data whose characteristics are set out above, pursuant to Article 69 of the Act of 6 January 1978 as amended.” The CNIL thus validated the agreements concluded in 1960 and 1987 between the French Republic, then represented by the direction of the Archives de France, and the Church of Jesus Christ of the Saints of the Last Days.
In this case, the problem to be solved is not so much that of the correct post-mortem processing of the civil status data of deceased persons as that of their exploitation for religious purposes, even after the seventy-five years period provided for in e) of 4 of article L. 213-2 of the Heritage Code. While public archives must remain open to consultation by right, subject to periods during which they are inaccessible, sometimes under conditions that are otherwise objectionable, their treatment by a religion according to the rules of dogma or belief, even to the test of methods of genealogy, should be prohibited in a State separate from cults, unless the deceased have decided otherwise during their lifetime or, failing that, if the descendants accept it. On the point, the law is silent and would deserve to be completed. Imagine Jean Jaurès or President Émile Combes receiving a baptism for the dead and their relatives from a genealogical exploitation by the company Family Search International in order to sublimate their «eternal families». In this regard, let us note that the question here posed recalls another: it involves freedom of conscience, fundamental principle recognized by the laws of the Republic and article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of 4 November 1950, which is also affected by the maintenance against their will of the identity of persons, living or deceased, in the records of catholicity.
This legal vacuum is not such as to justify the maintenance of the CNIL decision of 25 April 2013, for two reasons. On the one hand, the religious purpose of the processing of civil status public data by the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints is not legitimate in view of the respect due to the deceased foreign to this cult, which proceeds to their baptism without their explicit consent, The separation of church and state. On the other hand, to our knowledge, Family Search International does not satisfy, unless I am mistaken, the obligation […] to inform, in a clear and educational way, the persons concerned by the archives processed […].
Consequently, the FNLP asks the CNIL in its capacity as an independent administrative authority to revoke its decision of 25 April 2013.
Please believe, Mss President, that I have every confidence in your assurance of my highest consideration.
P.O. the Vice President
Dominique GOUSSOT
Ms. Marie-Laure DENIS
National Commission for Information Technology and Freedoms
3, place Fontenoy
75007 PARIS
[trad reverso]