Saint Cornelius

Pope and Martyr

Feast Day

September 16

Life

d. 253

Born

Rome

Saint Cornelius was elected Bishop of Rome in March 251, after the see had been vacant for fourteen months following the martyrdom of Pope Saint Fabian under the Decian persecution. His pontificate was dominated by the lapsi controversy: how the Church should treat Christians who had sacrificed to the gods or otherwise apostatized under torture and now sought reconciliation.

Cornelius, supported by his African correspondent Saint Cyprian of Carthage, taught that those who had lapsed could be readmitted to communion after sincere penance. Against him stood the Roman priest Novatian, who set himself up as a rival bishop and denied the Church's power to forgive grave sins after baptism. A Roman synod of sixty bishops convoked by Cornelius in 251 condemned the Novatianist rigorism.

Renewed persecution under the emperor Trebonianus Gallus brought Cornelius into exile at Centumcellae (modern Civitavecchia) in 252, where he died in June 253, the Liber Pontificalis and ancient martyrologies counting him as a martyr. He is named in the Roman Canon (Eucharistic Prayer I) together with Cyprian, with whom his memorial has been joined since the early Roman calendars. He was buried in the Crypt of Lucina in the catacomb of Saint Callistus on the Appian Way; his tomb still bears its original Latin inscription.