From Simon Mayer’s blog
Cecil Roth, Arthur Day and the Mortara Affair
In June 1929, Father Arthur Day, an English Jesuit, the Vice-President of the Catholic Guild of Israel,and author of several booklets and articles on converting the Jews, published an article on the Mortara Affair in the The Month (the periodical of the English Jesuits). The Mortara Affair was an incident in which a six year old Jewish child, Edgardo Mortara, was forcibly removed from his family in 1858 by the Carabinieri (the military police of the Papal States), placed in the care of the Church, and later adopted by Pius IX. This was because a Catholic maid (Anna Morisi), afraid that Edgardo was about to die, illicitly baptised him – or at least claimed to have done so. Years later she revealed this to Father Feletti, the inquisitor in Bologna. The matter was referred to the Holy Office, which…
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