Pope (236-250) and saint of the Roman Christian Church born in Rome, who died a martyr (250) during the persecution of Emperor Decius. A farmer by birth, he went to St. Peter's tomb to pray and people swore they saw a sign of the Holy Spirit on his head.
He was elected and ordained a deacon, elder, bishop, and elected pope on the same day. His pontificate coincided, except at the beginning and the end, with an exceptional period of peace, prosperity and development for the Church. He was an energetic and far-sighted administrator and in the census he took of the Church of Rome he counted that in the city there were seven ecclesiastical constituencies, with seven bishops, forty-six elders, seven deacons, fifty-two exorcists, readers and ushers, fifteen hundred widows under the protection of the Church, and a total of forty thousand Christians.
Through the Liber Pontificalis, the collection of papal biographies, he had much work done in the catacombs, including the enlargement of that of S. Callisto. The term catacomb is the name of the primitive Christian cemeteries, consisting of galleries, cubicles and other cavities. Admired by St. Cyprian, he was revered in the East as a great miracle-working saint. According to the author Eusebius, in his Ecclesiastical History, Origen addressed him a treaty in which he defended himself against the charge of heresy.
Emperor Decius unleashed a fierce persecution against the Church (246) and he fled Rome and began his hermit life with the anchorites. Arrested, at the end of his pontificate, he inflexibly maintained the process in the presence of Emperor Decius of who is said to have pronounced at the end of the judgment: I would rather have a rival in the empire than a bishop in Pomegranate.
Martyred in Rome, the pontificate was left for 14 months without occupation, due to the violent persecution of Decius, including because his possible successors were all in prison by order of the emperor. During this period the main interlocutor of the clergy of Rome was an ecclesiastical man named Novatian. When the situation allowed, the vast majority chose the Roman Cornelius, not on his own initiative, but because of his acknowledged humility, prudence and kindness.
Source: http://www.dec.ufcg.edu.br/biografias/
Order F - Biography - Brazil School
