Today at the HowStuffWorks office, employees’ kids are invited to come trick or treat. This is making my desk, currently home to Snickers, Butterfingers and Starbursts, a popular place to be. In exchange for candy, I made my writer, How-to blogger Molly, give me my blog topic today. “What about the pope who kidnapped a kid?” What about him indeed.

That pope would be Pius IX, he of the longest pontificate, and the kidnapped child was named Edgardo Mortara. In 1858, Edgardo was 6 years old and living with his seven siblings in Bologna when he was taken away by order of the Inquisitor.

The Mortara family was Jewish, but they had a Catholic servant. When he was very young, Edgardo became seriously ill, and the servant, fearing his death and damnation, baptized him. She confessed her act to Church authorities and set history in motion.

The law of the time was that a Christian child absolutely couldn’t be raised in a Jewish home, and, since he was baptized, Edgardo was a Christian living with a Jewish family. Edgardo was taken from his parents to be raised as a Catholic. The pope took him as his personal ward, and Edgardo eventually entered the clergy. The Mortaras never saw him again.

You might be shocked, as I was, to learn that this certainly wasn’t an isolated incident. It wasn’t unheard of for European Jewish children to be kidnapped to “save their souls.” This case, however, caused an international uproar, and the pope’s refusal to back down weakened the Church’s power in Italy.

This particular situation isn’t one I heard of in any of my religion classes throughout my years of Catholic schooling, but it left a stain on Pius IX’s reputation. When he was beatified in 2000, the Jewish community strongly and vocally objected. The pope was known for other anti-Semitic actions besides the Mortara kidnapping – he’s quoted referring to Jewish people as “dogs” and made it known he believed in Jewish ritual murders, the myth that Jews sacrifice Christian children as part of their religious rites.

Not the brightest period of Church history.

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