Revisiting the 1858 Mortara controversy

The Kidnapping of a six year old Jewish boy, Edgardo Mortara, by the Vatican, in 1858. The painting, by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, was made in 1862.

New information has surfaced about the Edgardo Mortara affair of the 19th century, which involved a young Jewish boy who was taken from his parents because he’d been secretly baptized by a servant. Pope Pius IX backed the order to take the child in 1858.

At the time, the press called it an  “outrage,” and Henry Raymond  of the New York Times wrote that it was a “violation of one of the most sacred natural rights of man.” Had the case occurred in another country, or had a Roman Catholic family been similarly treated in a Jewish or Protestant community, “the voice of civilization would have been just as loud in condemnation” (NY Times, December 4, 1858).

Mortara stayed with the church and eventually became a Catholic priest, often preaching against Jews and thanking God and the church that he had been saved from a life with them.  His memoirs have an anti-semitic cast that Mortara learned from the church at the time. The incident was recounted in a 1997 book,  The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, by David I Kertzer, a professor at Brown University.

Recently, Kertzer wrote that the case has reverberated into the 21st century because of the decision to beatify Pope Pius IX and also because of angry protests from the Mortara family and Jews around the world.

Another factor is the way Hollywood is getting in on the act. “Steven Spielberg’s announcement that he plans to make a movie about the event …  has produced a new burst of attention, especially from conservatives in the Roman Catholic Church worried about popular reaction to the retelling of the story,” Kertzer wrote.

Most troubling is the 2017 publication of a version of Mortara’s memoirs by Vittorio Messori, published by Ignatius Press (affiliated with the Catholic Church).  The English and Italian versions of the memoirs were altered from the original Kertzer says in order to soften both the details of the “violent kidnapping” (Mortara’s words) and Mortara’s own anti-semitic statements.

The Doctored Memoir of a Jewish Boy Kidnapped by the Vatican, The Atlantic, April 15, 2018.