24 January 1850 – 11 Shevat 5610
The House of Rothschild lent Pope Pius IX fifty million francs in exchange for papal assurances that Rome’s ghetto walls would be demolished. The pope reneged, however, reimposing restrictions on his Jewish subjects and pressuring other European rulers to reverse the process of Jewish emancipation begun in 1848. In 1859, in a patently anti-Jewish ruling, Pius insisted that Edgar Mortera, a Jewish boy secretly baptized by his nurse and then abducted by the Vatican police, should be raised as a Christian, despite philanthropist Moses Montefiore’s attempt to return the child to his parents.
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