Ecclesiastical Matters

 

Some time ago a painting by the Jewish artist Moritz Daniel Oppenheim was put up for auction at Sotheby’s. Listed under the Judaica sub-section, the painting titled “The kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara “was sold for 407,000 USD.

The catalogue note included in the sales page provides hitherto little-known details of the work and its subject.

“The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara is one of Moritz Daniel Oppenheim’s most important paintings.

The Mortara case was an Italian cause célèbre that captured the attention of much of Europe and North America in the 1850s and 1860s. It concerned the Papal States' seizure of a six-year-old boy named Edgardo Mortara from his Jewish family in Bologna, on the basis of a former housemaid’s testimony that she had administered an emergency baptism to the boy when he fell ill as an infant. Mortara grew up as a Catholic under the protection of Pope Pius IX, who refused his parents' desperate pleas for his return, and eventually became a priest. The domestic and international outrage against the pontifical state's actions may have contributed to its downfall amid the unification of Italy.

In late 1857, Bologna's inquisitor Father Pier Feletti heard that Anna Morisi, who had worked in the Mortara house for six years, had secretly baptised Edgardo when she thought he was about to die. The Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition held the view that this action irrevocably made the child a Catholic and, because the Papal States forbade the raising of Christians by members of other faiths, it ordered that he be taken from his family and brought up by the Church. Police came to the home of Salomone and Marianna Mortara, late on 23^rd of June 1858 and kidnapped Edgardo the following evening.

The work was painted in 1862, four years after the kidnapping. Oppenheim’s painting is an example of the world-wide attention the topic gained.

 

At this juncture I want to add an ironic margin note: “Salomone Mortara was a successful Jewish tailor from Bologna, whose clientele included the local police. Ten policemen wearing uniforms produced by the Mortaras knocked on their door on the evening of June 23, 1858 and forcibly removed Edgardo the following day”.

 

Back to the main text and an opinion voiced by one Catholic church historian:

“This was an act of arrogance on the part of one of the most backwards nations in the West. The abduction of the Italian-Jewish boy from Bologna did much more to foment anti-religious Catholic sentiment than the awkward public blunders of dozens of bishops and priests. In other words, the free world hated the Church more than it pitied the Mortaras.”

Despite the strenuous efforts of the Edgardo’s parents, who worked tirelessly to rally support from Jewish communities and from prominent European leaders; despite protests from the Rothschild family and the intervention of Sir Moses Montefiore himself; despite the disapproval of the French Emperor Napoleon III, the boy was never returned to his family.

“In 1858 the Papal States ran the length of the Italian peninsula, but 12 years after the Mortara kidnapping, Papal authority in the political realm had largely been swept aside and a unified Italy emerged in 1870 under Victor Emmanuel. The global indignation over the Mortara kidnapping, which was widely seen as an affront to the ‘natural rights’ of parents, fed into the rising opposition to Papal rule: “A case can be made that Anna Morisi…. dirt poor and illiterate, made a greater contribution to Italian unification than many of the heroes whose statues preside over Italian town piazzas today.” (David I. Kertzer, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, New York, 1997.

Now regarding the painting:

“By the time of the major exhibition celebrating the 100^th anniversary of Oppenheim’s birth at the Frankfurter Kunstverein in 1900, the painting had disappeared, and was represented only by a photograph.” …” After more than 100 years, the re-appearance of this painting is an extraordinary discovery which has been welcomed by Oppenheim scholars everywhere.” One art critic commented.

The life of Edgardo Mortara after his abduction is especially interesting. With the Pope as a substitute father, Mortara trained for the priesthood in Rome until the Kingdom of Italy captured the city in 1870. He left the country and was ordained in France three years later at the age of 21. Mortara spent most of his life outside Italy and died in a Belgian monastery in 1940, aged 88, shortly before the Nazi occupation.

It has been widely claimed that Mortara case led to the founding of Alliance Israelite Universelle providing support and educational facilities for Jews in many countries, especially in the Levant and the Maghreb.

 

Let’s move fast forward to the twentieth century when a like incident occurred:

A piece posted by columnist Rebecca Benhamou in The Times of Israel dated 27 May 2013 is particularly enlightening: “A French historian examines a 1946 directive forbidding Catholic authorities from handing over baptised Jewish children to their families after the Holocaust

Reopening a scandal that broke in 2004, with the publication of a new French book “L’Eglise de France et les enfants juifs” (“The French Church and Jewish Children”) is a 10-year investigation into one of the most controversial post-war Catholic Church policies.

The book opens with an October 23, 1946, directive from the French Apostolic Nunciature that author Catherine Poujol found in the Church Archives at Issy-les-Moulineaux in 2004,( a commune in the southwestern area of Paris.)

Leaked to the Italian daily newspaper Corriere Della Sera without her permission on December 28, 2004, the document, written in French and ‘approved by the Holy Father’ — forbids Catholic authorities from allowing Jewish children who had been sheltered by Catholics and baptised to be returned to their families and communities.

“For Jews today, children or grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, the letter from the Nunciature is written evidence of what was once feared,” Poujol writes. “We knew that after the war, Jewish organisations did everything in their power to obtain a letter from the pope, a memorandum asking institutions looking after hidden Jewish children to hand them over.

“Today, we have the evidence that a contrary order came from the Vatican, and affected some of these children,” she adds.

 “For a historian, it is very tempting to talk to the press. The formal Church directive outlining how to deal with requests from Jewish organisations looking for hidden children throughout Europe fails to mention the atrocities of the Holocaust.

“Children who have been baptised must not be entrusted to institutions that would not be in a position to guarantee their Christian upbringing,” the document says. “For children who no longer have their parents, given the fact that the Church is responsible for them, it is not acceptable for them to be abandoned by the Church or entrusted to any persons who have no rights over them, at least until they are in a position to choose themselves.”

Archbishop of Lyon Monsignor Gerlier — credited with rescuing 120 Jewish children from deportation in Vénissieux — received the letter on April 30, 1947, along with another document, entitled “Note from the Abbot Blanc.”

Explaining the opinion of a theologist consulted by the Vatican envoy in France, Angelo Rocalli, the document states: “Baptism is what makes a Christian, hence it ‘cancels the Jew,’ which allowed the Church to protect so many endangered Israelites.”

To this day, there are no reliable figures on how many French Jewish children were hidden and saved by Catholics, or directly affected by this Church directive.

For almost a decade, Poujol refused to talk to the press about her discovery. Now, she explains the reasons behind her silence.

“I didn’t want to add fuel to the fire without properly investigating the subject — and this was a very complex, lengthy process,” she told The Times of Israel.

“When the media published the directive, they had no evidence whatsoever of its origin and its actual impact on the Church, especially when you discover something big. But had I talked, I would have lost my credibility and the Church’s trust.”

Poujol admits, however, that without the 2004 scandal, the French Church would probably not have granted her access to its private archives.

“The Church felt cornered, and at first adopted an inward-looking stance. But soon it realised that denying the access to these post-war documents would fuel the scandal even more.”

After examining countless sources and traveling throughout Europe, the US and Israel, Poujol came to the conclusion that even if this document clearly outlines the Church’s intention of keeping baptised Jewish children under its custody, it doesn’t cast blame on the entire Catholic Church.

Many priests and bishops acted completely independently and didn’t abide by the directive,” she says.

Poujol notes that there is very little evidence as to which members of the Church did receive the note.

“After the war, the Church was in an unprecedented, exceptional situation — and wasn’t prepared for it,” she says. “On the one hand, a sacrament, in this case baptism, was administered to save individuals from a likely death. But on the other hand, Catholics truly believe in the rescue of souls via this sacrament.”

Amid numerous, well-documented examples, Poujol mentions the Finaly Affair, which consumed and divided France in 1953.

In 1944, two Jewish boys, Robert and Gerald Finaly, were sent by their parents to a Catholic nursery in Grenoble. After the parents were deported and murdered in Auschwitz, their uncle and aunt, who were living in Israel and a second aunt who lived in New Zealand, attempted to get the children back.

In 1948, a French Catholic nurse Antoinette Brun baptised the children without the family’s permission and formally adopted them, omitting to tell the judge about the existence of other relatives.

The affair reached the national spotlight when a police investigation found that several nuns of the Notre Dame de Sion order and Basque priests had arranged and executed the kidnapping and smuggling of the children in Spain in February 1953.

The boys were returned to their family after a lengthy legal battle that divided the French public opinion.

Poujol explains, “The Finaly Affair is the most emblematic example of the Church’s ambivalent attitude. The debate opposed on the one hand Monsignor Gerlier, who did everything he could not to hand over the children, and on the other hand, Monsignor Caillot, archbishop of Grenoble and fervent supporter of the Vichy government, who lobbied actively to return the boys to their family.”

French public opinion was divided into two opposing camps, clericals against anti-clericals, Zionists against anti-Zionists, and canon law against Republican law,” she adds.

In France, 11,600 Jewish children died during World War II, but another 72,400 survived.

“There are many grey areas when it comes to the role of the Catholic Church during and after the war; we cannot jump to a clear-cut, black or white conclusion,” says Poujol. “The very goal of my book is to show that we need to adopt a nuanced stance.”

Dr. Robert Finaly was born in 1941 in Grenoble, France. In March 1944 his parents were deported to Auschwitz. Robert and his younger brother Gad (Gerald) were placed in the city’s Catholic children’s home. The manager of the institution cared for them but refused to return them to their family after the war, instead baptising them as Christians. After a lengthy legal battle fought by the boys’ aunts — during which they were hidden in various Catholic institutions in Italy and Spain — the boys were returned to their families and emigrated to Israel to live with their aunt.

I want to add a postscript noting the struggle to return the Finaly boys to their family was conducted by private individuals. At that time the Israeli government was loath to annoy the Vatican, preferring to leave the matter to the family and its supporters.

I’ll hazard a personal comment here. If anything like the Finaly case were to happen today the Mossad or one of the IDF special forces units would be dispatched to rescue them, regardless of the consequences.

Another case in point which received less publicity, but nevertheless deserves no less attention, concerns the fate of the children who survived the Holocaust in the convents of Poland. Poland is, of course, one of the largest Catholic countries in Europe and one in which the Church had a special stature and exerted strong influence over its believers. I will try to include it in another post.

I want conclude by briefly referring to another Church related incident, but this time “the shoe is on the other foot.”  Quite recently Times of Israel journalist Jacob Magid wrote about an unprecedented project to expand a national park onto church-owned lands and Christian holy sites in East Jerusalem. The project has sparked

fierce opposition from local Christian leaders.

The move would not strip the landholders of their ownership, but it would give the government some authority over Palestinian and church properties and religious sites, leading church officials and rights groups to characterise the measure as a power grab and a threat to the Christian presence in the Holy Land.

The plan would see the borders of the Jerusalem Walls National Park extended to include a large section of the Mount of Olives along with additional parts of the Kidron and Ben Hinnom Valleys. It’s scheduled to come before the Jerusalem municipality’s Local Planning and Construction Committee for preliminary approval later this week.

The Israel Nature and Parks Authority (INPA), which is promoting the project, says the expansion is designed to restore long-neglected lands and better preserve historical landscapes, and that it will not harm the church properties incorporated into the national park.

A visiting delegation of Democrats from the US House of Representatives was briefed on the matter and subsequently raised their concern regarding the project with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett during a meeting last week.

Jacob Magid quoted a letter written by church leaders claiming that although the plan is officially presented by the INPA, it seems that it was put forward and is being orchestrated, advanced and promoted by entities whose apparent sole purpose is to confiscate and nationalise one of the holiest sites for Christianity and alter its nature,”

Under the guise of protecting green spaces, the plan appears to serve an ideological agenda that denies the status and rights of Christians in Jerusalem.

Clearly the “men of the cloth” have a valid argument and the project should be overseen by an uninvolved neutral body other than the INPA that will allay the fears of church leaders. A body dedicated to minimal landscaping and maximum clearing of undergrowth, weeds etc., without encroaching on church properties.

Just the same, I’m not sorry that the shoe is on the other foot.

 

Have a good weekend.

 

Beni                                                                3^rd of March, 2022