Edgardo Mortara was a 19th-century Catholic priest whose childhood became a major international controversy. Born to a Jewish family in Bologna, he was taken from his parents by the Papal States authorities in 1858. This seizure occurred after a domestic worker claimed to have performed an emergency baptism on him as an infant. Raised within the Church under the protection of Pope Pius IX, Mortara eventually entered religious life. He later served as a member of the Augustinians and the Canons Regular of the Lateran, spending much of his adult life outside of Italy.