Saint Callistus I, Pope & Martyr

Saint Callistus was Bishop of Rome from about the year 217 until his death around 222, holding the chair of Peter in the difficult years of the early third century. Before his elevation he had served the Roman Church as a deacon, entrusted by his predecessor Saint Zephyrinus with the care of the Christian cemetery on the Appian Way — the burial-place that still bears his name, the Catacombs of Saint Callistus, where many of the early popes and martyrs were laid to rest.

A shepherd of the early Church

As Supreme Pontiff, Saint Callistus governed the Roman Church in an age beset both by the danger of persecution and by controversies touching the faith and the discipline of the Church. He is remembered in particular for his pastoral care toward penitents, holding to the Church’s power to reconcile and to receive back those who had fallen into grave sin and done penance — a mercy that some of his own day judged too lenient, but which the Church afterward vindicated as the true mind of Christ, who came to call sinners to repentance. In this and in other matters he upheld the office of mercy and of unity committed to the See of Peter.

Of the particulars of his life much has been variously reported, and the historian must use care in sifting the sources that have come down to us. What is held with certainty is that he was Bishop of Rome in those years, that he gave his name to the great cemetery he had once tended, and that ancient tradition has constantly honoured him as a martyr who laid down his life for the faith in a season of trial at Rome.

His veneration

The collect of his feast is that of a Supreme Pontiff and Martyr, in which the Church, beholding how we fail through our own weakness, prays to be restored to the love of God through the example of his saints. His name is honoured in the Canon of the Mass among the early Roman martyrs, and his memory is bound up with the catacomb where so many of the faithful of the early Church await the resurrection.

His feast is kept on the fourteenth of October. In Saint Callistus the Church remembers an early successor of Saint Peter who tended the resting-place of the martyrs, who upheld the mercy of God toward repentant sinners, and who himself bore witness to Christ in the age of persecution.

Patronage

He is venerated among the early popes and martyrs of the Roman Church, and his name is borne by the ancient Catacombs of Saint Callistus on the Appian Way, the burial-place of many early martyrs; he is named in the Canon of the Mass.