OFFICIAL 20 P a g e s .
ORGAN
OF
CATHOLIC
SATURDAY, JANUARY
N o . 2.
A d o p t e d
Child
of
ACTION 10 C e n t s .
12, 1935.
P o p e
Pius
I X
Celebrates Diamond Jubilee of his Priesthood The little child Mortara was severely ill at the age of one and the Christian girl secretly baptised him. Unexpectedly, be recovered. In a monastery near Liege, Belgium, POPE AS HIS GUARDIAN. a priest who was born a Jew} celebrated The Christian girl became worried on December 8, 1934, the 60th anniverabout her act, and when the boy Morsary of his ordination as a Catholic tara was in his seventh year she placed priest. the matter before her parish priest. He remembers with affection Pope The case reached Rome through the Pius IX, who adopted him when he was Archbishop of Bologna, and the Holy "7 years old. His adoption raised a great See ordered that the boy should be •outcry. taken from Bologna to be brought up The case has been called the "Mortara in Rome. Mystery" and it is the subject of the Fr. Arthur Day, S.I., has described, the cose, Dom Pio Mortara, C.R.L., who is iiec.uel in a C.T.S. pamphlet entitled new keeping his jubilee. The Mortara Mystery. He writes: Dom Mortara was born of Jewish "A few days after the * kidnapping/ parents in 1851 at Bologna, Italy, at as hostile critics styled it, the Pope that time rart of the Papal States. His parents, ontrary to a Papal law, had received Edgardo (Mortara) with the utmost kindness and declared himself, ^ Christian girl in their employ. JEWISH CHILD WHOSE BAPTISM RAISED STORM OF OPPOSITION AGAINST THE POPE.
as ustom prescribed, the guardian of the Christian child "As soon as the news of the removal of the young baptised Jew into the Pope's custody became generally known, a wellorganised agitation was set on foot in Europe and America. For this was a moment in the history of the papacy when such a pretext for an outcry was specially prized in several quarters " But Pope Pius IX steadfastly refused to give up the boy. In his fifteenth year young Mortara became a novice in the order of the Canons Regular of the Lateran. And in 1870, when Rome was taken by Victor Emmanuel, Fra Pio, as Mortara was now callel, was offered by the "liberatirs" every facility for returning to his family. BUT THIS RE REFUSED TO DO. His parents had not consented to part with him. "His mother never said a
word against the Pope: it was her firm convi tion that if she could have seen His Holiness the child would have been restored to her. For eight ys^rs his father left his letters unanswered." DEVOTED TO OUR LADY. Dom Mortara was ordained, proved himself a gifted preacher, is said to have visited America in the cause of converting the Jews, and certainly visited England. He also was privileged to speak to St. John Bosco while at Marseiles. During the crucial years of his boyhood the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was defined and Our Lady appeared at Lourdes. He has a grateful devotion to Our Lady, and so it is he celebrated bis diamond jubilee by singing High Mass —for the conversion of the Jews on the Feast of the Imma ulate Conception.
SAINT PETER AS PATRON OF BRAZILIAN FISHERMEN. , „ -vSO-MM recentlv held a Congress at Rio de Jeneiro, accompanied by festivities, carried in procession, The Federation of BrazH.anJ^ennen gaiBt Fi8herlnen and our picture shows: A statue of bt. reter, pa^ruu (Keystone).
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