SAN FRANCISCO – For the first time in the English-speaking world, the incredible story of Edgardo Mortara is told in his own words through the new book, KIDNAPPED BY THE VATICAN? His story is one that reverberated around the world in the late 19th century, and is currently the cause that is holding up the canonization of Blessed Pope Pius IX.

Mortara was born into a Jewish family but was secretly baptized by a Catholic servant of his family when he was near death as an infant. He survived, but because of the laws of the Papal States in Italy where he lived, and the sacredness of the sacraments, Mortara had to be raised as a Catholic, not a Jew. This began the long saga that involved Pope Pius IX, an antagonistic media and the dissolution of the Papal States in 1870.

Much has been written about Mortara but none of it in his own words. KIDNAPPED BY THE VATICAN? reveals how the child felt when he was taken by Pope Pius IX from his home, how he thrived in Rome, became a priest, and was secretly smuggled out of the country when hostile forces sought him as an adult.

Mortara’s story, while it happened in the late 1800s, is relevant even today. Hollywood has already taken a keen interest in the story and director Steven Spielberg will start filming a movie about it later this year. Yet, it is likely many of the untruths in Mortara’s story will resurface in the Hollywood version of the narrative. 

“The Mortara Case is something few people know much about,” James V. Schall, S.J., Professor Emeritus at Georgetown University, says about KIDNAPPED BY THE VATICAN? “It involves sacramental issues, the relation of Jews and Christians, kidnapping, and the last of the Papal States.”

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For more information, to request a review copy or to schedule an interview with Roy Schoeman, who wrote the foreword to KIDNAPPED BY THE VATICAN?, please contact Kevin Wandra of Carmel Communications.