An organization under the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormon Church, provided digital records of documents that were lost in a fire that hit the Catholic church of Manila’s Pandacan district last month.
FamilySearch, the largest genealogical organization in the world, turned over to the parish of Pandacan on August 6 digital copies of centuries-old parish records that date back from 1778 to 1968.
A fire gutted the parish church of Pandacan on July 10, destroying the centuries-old image of the Child Jesus and liturgical artifacts.
The fire also destroyed 190 years of parish data, including baptismal and marriage records and other documents.
In September 2019, FamilySearch also turned over 400 years’ of historical data in digital form to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines.
FamilySearch is a non-profit organization committed to helping people connect with their ancestors. It is also committed to preserving data of historical significance, such as Church records and oral histories.
FamilySearch, which has 4,600 family history centers in 126 countries including the Philippines, relies on the support of volunteers, mostly members of the Church, to index digitized records to make them searchable on the FamilySearch website.
In July, FamilySearch Philippines logged more than three million records indexed in just four months.
Elder Taniela B. Wakolo, General Authority Seventy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, together with Felvir Ordinario, area manager of FamilySearch Philippines, turned over the Pandacan church records to Father Sanny de Claro, parish priest of the Santo Niño de Pandacan Parish.
