In the summer of 1858, in what was then the Papal States of current Italy, a young boy was taken from his family. The sixth child of a Jewish couple living in Bologna, Edgardo Mortara was ordered to Rome, and under the instruction of the current Pope at the time, he was to become a Catholic. Although Edgardo had been raised Jewish, one of the family’s maids had secretly baptized him, creating a conflict that would find its way all over the Western world, creating outrage at the conditions and trials faced by the Jewish communities living in Italy at the time — under the rule of the Papal States, it had become common for Jewish boys to be taken away to become Catholic. Even in the United States, outlets like The New York Times were reporting on it.
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