Edgardo Mortara - Ordination and Later Life

Ordination and Later Life

In 1859, after Bologna had been annexed to Piedmont, the Mortara parents made another effort to recover their son, but he had been taken to Rome. In 1870, when Rome was captured from the Pope, they tried again, but Edgardo was then 19 and therefore legally an adult, and had declared his firm intention of remaining a Roman Catholic. In that year, he was assigned to France. The following year, his father died. In France, he entered the Augustinian order, being ordained a priest at the age of 23, and adopted the spiritual name Pius. Fr. Edgardo Mortara was sent as a missionary to cities such as Munich, Mainz and Breslau to preach to the Jews there. He became fluent in a variety of languages. As he traveled widely, his effort to convince Jews to convert was mostly unsuccessful.

During a public-speaking engagement in Italy he reestablished communications with his mother and siblings. In 1895, he attended his mother's funeral, led by the rabbi of Bologna. His nieces and nephews, as adults, recalled the frequent visits from him.

In 1897, he preached in St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, but Michael Corrigan, the Archbishop of New York, told the Vatican that he opposed Mortara's efforts to evangelise Jews on the grounds that such efforts might embarrass the Church in the eyes of the United States government. Father Mortara asked Bishop Corrigan for financial support. The archbishop refused.

Mortara died in 1940 at the abbey of Bouhay in Bressoux, near Liège in Belgium, having spent his last years there. He was 88 years old.