The year is 1858. Following Pope Pius IX’s orders, soldiers burst into the Mortara family’s Bologna home to forcibly remove their six-year-old son Edgardo. They had heard from the Jewish family’s maid that she had secretly baptised him as a sickly infant. Under the Church’s doctrine, the boy is no longer permitted to live with his non-Catholic family. The Mortara family try desperately to get Edgardo back, and the scandal soon makes its way across the country and Europe at large. As they embark on an international campaign to have their son returned, they find themselves at the epicentre of a wider historical battle between the forces of Catholic authoritarianism and the political awakening taking place across Italy and throughout Europe.