June 23: Bologna (now, northern Italy) then part of the Papal States: Police arrive at the home of a Jewish couple, Salomone and Marianna Padovani Mortara, to seize one of their eight children, six–year–old Edgardo. The police then transport him to Rome to be raised as a Catholic, ultimately in a house for Catholic converts.
The police had orders from the (Vatican) Holy Office authorities in Rome, authorized by Pope Pius IX. Apparently, during an illness of Edgardo, the Catholic servant girl of the Mortaras had (illegally) unilaterally ‘baptized’ him. Since he was now, in Church eyes, a Catholic, the Vatican advised the Mortaras that they could not keep their own son, unless they converted to Catholicism. The Mortaras declined the invitation; Edgardo’s six–year–old mind was the Vatican’s to mold, which they did.
[For the entire convoluted and quite–sordid saga, which continues “to have wings” to this day, almost 70 years after Edgardo’s death in 1940, see David Kertzer’s 1997 book, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara.]