St Cornelius Feast Day September 16th. I am helping to keep up the Saint of the Day Shrine at Mount St. Michael and came across this information about this Saint.

You probably all knew this but I didn't; found it interesting the way this web site tells of how he came to be pope.

"September 16

St. Cornelius

(d. 253)


There was no pope for 14 months after the martyrdom of St. Fabian because of the intensity of the persecution of the Church. During the interval, the Church was governed by a college of priests. St. Cyprian, a friend of Cornelius, writes that Cornelius was elected pope "by the judgment of God and of Christ, by the testimony of most of the clergy, by the vote of the people, with the consent of aged priests and of good men."

http://www.americancatholic.org/Feature ... sp?id=1140

I never knew this, and I thank you.

Thank you for posting this. Information like this is always interesting.

Thank you for all your magnificient posts. Very religiously informative. God Bless you! Truly inspirational items gives me more insight and desire to learn more toward our traditional Catholic faith and religious information.

I have in my possession two very large volumns of The Lives of the Saints by Butler dated 1833. Being curious about the saint I looked into this large book and read more details; there are many more pages in this volumn about the saint, but this is the part about his election. I typed it word from word for interesting parties.


“The holy pope Fabian having been crowned with martyrdom on the 20th of January, in the year 250, the see of Rome remained vacant above sixteen months, the clergy and people not being able all that while, through the violence of the persecution, to assemble for the election of a bishop. St. Cyprian says, that such was the rage of the persecutor Decius, that he would more easily have suffered a competitor in his empire than a bishop in Rome. At length, however, when that emperor was taken up in opposing the revolt of Julius Valens, or in his wars against the Goths, at a distance from Rome, Cornelius was chosen to fill the apostolic chair in 251.

St. Cyprian testifies that he was a person of an unblemished character and virginal purity, remarkable for his humility; meek, modest, peaceable, and adorned with all other virtures; that he was not advanced to the episcopal dignity on a sudden, but had gone through all the orders of the clergy, as the previous steps, and served the Lord in the functions of each distinct order, as the canons require. At the time of Saint Fabian’s death he was a priest in the RomanChurch, and had the chief share in the direction of affairs during the vacancy of the holy see. Far from aiming at, or desiring the supreme dignity in the Church to which he was raised, he suffered violence, says the same St. Cyprian, and was promoted to it by force and compulsion.

In this we see the character of the Spirit of God, which teaches holy men in humility and distrust sincerely to fear and decline such posts, which presumption, vanity, and ambition make others seek and invade, who, by this mark alone, are sufficiently proved to be most unworthy. And Cornelius, by gradually proceeding through all the functions of the ministry, according to the spirit of the Church, had attained all the graces and virtures by which he was qualified for that high station.

The election of Cornelius was made by a due assembly of almost all the clergy of Rome; a great number also of the laity, who were present, consented to and demanded his ordination. The concurring suffrages of sixteen anient and worthy bishops (two of whom were Africans), who happen then to be in Rome, confirmed the same, and the elect was compelled to receive the episcopal consecration. St. Cyprian and other bishops, according to custom, despatched to him letters of communion and congratulations.”