St. Cornelius

St. Cornelius was a Roman priest elected pope in the year 251, after the See of Rome had stood vacant for more than a year — the ferocity of the emperor Decius's persecution had made it impossible to choose a successor to the martyred Pope Fabian. Little is known of his origins; he seems to have been a Roman of modest reputation, praised by contemporaries for his humility. His brief pontificate was consumed by one of the early Church's defining controversies: what to do with the lapsi, Christians who had denied the faith or sacrificed to idols under persecution. Against the rigorist party of the Roman priest Novatian — who set himself up as a rival bishop of Rome, the first antipope — Cornelius taught that the Church possessed the power to absolve even apostasy, and that the lapsed could be reconciled after sincere penance. A synod of some sixty bishops confirmed his position, and he was strongly supported by St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, whose letters to him survive. Cornelius's own correspondence provides a precious snapshot of the third-century Roman church, which he describes as supporting more than 150 clergy and some 1,500 widows and poor. When persecution resumed under the emperor Gallus, Cornelius was banished to Centumcellae (modern Civitavecchia), where he died in exile in June 253, worn down by hardship. The Church honored him as a martyr from earliest times; he was buried in the Crypt of Lucina adjoining the Catacomb of St. Callixtus on the Appian Way, where his tomb slab — inscribed "Cornelius Martyr" — can still be seen. Cornelius is named in the Roman Canon of the Mass, and the Church celebrates his memorial on September 16 together with his friend and defender St. Cyprian. In the medieval Rhineland he was venerated as one of the Four Holy Marshals, invoked especially against earache, fever, and epilepsy, and as a protector of cattle and farm animals.