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| - On the evening of 23 June 1858, in Bologna, then part of the Papal States, police arrived at the home of a Jewish couple, Salomone ("Momolo") and Marianna Padovani Mortara, to take one of their eight children, six-year-old Edgardo, and transport him to Rome to be raised as a ward of the state.
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abstract
| - On the evening of 23 June 1858, in Bologna, then part of the Papal States, police arrived at the home of a Jewish couple, Salomone ("Momolo") and Marianna Padovani Mortara, to take one of their eight children, six-year-old Edgardo, and transport him to Rome to be raised as a ward of the state. The police had orders from Holy Office authorities in Rome, authorized by Pope Pius IX. Church officials had been told that a 14-year-old Catholic servant girl of the Mortaras, Anna Morisi, had baptized Edgardo while he was ill because she feared that he would otherwise die and go to Hell. Under Catholic Church doctrine, Edgardo's baptism was considered valid. This made him a Christian. By canon law, which was enforced in the Papal States, non-Christians could not raise a Christian child, even their own. In 1912, in his testimony in favour of the beatification of Pope Pius IX, Edgardo himself noted that the laws of the Papal States did not allow Catholics to work in the homes of Jewish families. That law was widely disregarded due to the ability of Catholic servants to work on the Jewish Shabbat. Edgardo was taken to a house for Catholic converts (a "House of Catechumens") in Rome, maintained at state expense. His parents were not allowed to see him for several weeks, and then not alone. Pius IX took a personal interest in the case, and all appeals to the Church were rebuffed. Church authorities told the Mortaras that they could have Edgardo back if they would convert to Catholicism, but they refused.
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