Pope says people are "fundamentally good"

I wouldn't consider creating Stockholm syndrome in people a good thing.

As he recounted it, his saga was the stuff of faith and hope: A story of how God chose a simple, illiterate servant girl to invest a small child with the miraculous powers of divine grace, and in doing so rescued him from his Jewish family – good people but, as Jews, on a God-forsaken path

According to an eyewitness account published in the Catholic L'armonia della religione colla civiltà, he had learned the catechism perfectly within a few days, "blesse[d] the servant who baptised him", and declared that he wanted to convert all Jews to Christianity

That story had the child begging the rector of the Catechumens not to send him back but to let him grow up in a Christian home

He wrote repeatedly to his family, he recalled, "dealing with religion and doing what I could to convince them of the truth of the Catholic faith", but received no reply until May 1867. His parents, who were now living in Florence, wrote that they still loved him dearly, but saw nothing of their son in the letters they had received

Momolo Mortara followed the Italian Army into Rome, hoping to finally reclaim his son. According to some accounts, he was preceded by his son Riccardo, Edgardo's elder brother, who had entered the kingdom's service as an infantry officer. Riccardo Mortara fought his way to San Pietro in Vincoli and found his brother's convent room. Edgardo covered his eyes, raised his hand in front of him and shouted: "Get back, Satan!"[101] When Riccardo said that he was his brother, Edgardo replied: "Before you get any closer to me, take off that assassin's uniform."

The Roman chief of police asked Edgardo to return to his family to appease public opinion, but he refused. He subsequently met the Italian commander, General Alfonso Ferrero La Marmora, who told him that as he was 19 years old he could do as he wished

In 1872, he moved to a monastery at Poitiers in France, where Pope Pius regularly corresponded with the bishop about the young man. After a year, Pio Edgardo Mortara was ordained as a priest. That required special dispensation because, aged 21, he was technically too young. He received a personal letter from the Pope to mark the occasion, along with a lifetime trust fund of 7,000 lire to support him

Father Mortara spent most of the rest of his life outside Italy, travelling throughout Europe and preaching. It was said that he could give sermons in six languages, including Basque, and read three more, including Hebrew.[104] "As a preacher he was in great demand," Kertzer writes