Edgardo Mortara

Edgardo Levi Mortara (Bologna, Papal States, August 27, 1851 – Liège, Belgium, March 11, 1940) was a Roman Catholic priest who was born and raised Jewish during only the first six years of his life, until he was seized and taken from his family by papal authorities. Mortara became the center of an international controversy when he was removed from his Jewish parents by authorities of the Papal States and raised as a Catholic. Church authorities took custody of the boy after receiving a report that he had been given emergency baptism by a domestic servant during a serious infantile illness. The rationale for this action was that in the Papal States, it was against the law for non-Catholics to raise Catholic children. Mortara was adopted...