The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara by David I. Kertzer

him alone with his son, intimidated Edgardo and made it impossible for the boy to say what he really felt. Nor did Momolo appreciate the conversionary sermons directed at himself, which would be a constant refrain in his visits to the Catechumens and in the later visits of his wife: There is an easy and blessed solution to your woes. If you become Catholics, you will have your beloved son once again, and share with him in the joys of eternal salvation.
    For the Catholic press, and the faithful whose view of the events was shaped by it, Edgardo’s early meetings with his father followed the traditional narrative form of the triumph of Christianity and righteousness. Having been graced by divine light on his way to Rome, Edgardo, although only six, was blessed with a spiritual strength well beyond his years. Indeed, the story was so inspiring that it continued to be told for many decades—with significant variations in detail, though always with the same basic outline.
    In all versions of the story, Edgardo, on entering the Catechumens, eagerly sought to learn all he could about his new religion. Most accounts report the dramatic scene in which Edgardo’s eyes fixed wonderingly on the painting of Our Lady of Sorrows as taking place during his trip to Rome. In others, this happens only after he arrives at the Catechumens. In one such version, Edgardo asks the Rector who the woman in the painting is and why she is crying. The Rector replies that she is the most holy Madonna, mother of Jesus Christ, and that she is crying for the Jews, who refuse to become Christians, and for all sinners.
    “Then she is crying for me too,” the boy responds.
    “No,” replies the Rector, “for you are Christian, and you will be good.”
    “Ah, then,” he says, “she is crying for my father and my mother.” 4
    Joseph Pelczar, a Polish bishop and turn-of-the-century biographer of Pope Pius IX, narrates the epic battle between father and son. Soon after the boy’s arrival in Rome, Pelczar recounts, Edgardo’s conversion was powerfully reinforced by his first visit to the Pope. “Clutching him affectionately to his breast,” Pius IX “made the sacred sign of the Cross on his forehead.” Spiritually fortified, the boy could now see his father without fear.
    On first setting eyes on his son, according to the Bishop, Momolo “broke out into torrents of tears and, holding the boy tightly to his breast, kept repeating that everyone in his family would be unhappy until he returned home. The boy turned white, he could not stop his tears, but he stood firm. After a few moments, he told his father: ‘Why do you cry? You see that I am fine here.’ ” Although his father kept trying to convince him otherwise, the boy would not yield. Indeed, by the time Momolo left, Edgardo felt hope that his father would see the light and convert too. In this, Pelczar added, “he was to remain disappointed.” 5
    Pelczar’s rendition of Edgardo’s first encounter with his father bears uncanny, though hardly coincidental, resemblance to one New Testament tale of Jesus himself. In Luke (2:41–50), the 12-year-old Jesus leaves his parents and goes off to the Temple in Jerusalem, where, after three days spent searching all over for him, his parents find the boy engaged in learned theological discussion with legal scholars. His mother says: “My son, why have you behaved like this with us? Don’t you see, your father and I have been looking for you and have been so worried about you?” To which Jesus replies: “Why are you looking for me so much? Didn’t you know that I have to be in the house of my Father?” These words, according to Luke, Jesus’ parents could not understand. 6
    French readers at the time were learning about Momolo’s dramatic first meetings with his son in the pages of L’Univers, an outspoken voice of Catholic conservatism and upholder of the temporal power of the papacy, put out by that fiercest of all defenders of papal