How do we know he was pope? St. Linus is identified by St. Irenaeus in his work Adversus Haeresis (“Against Heresy”) as the second pope and first successor of St. Peter, stating, “The blessed apostles, then, having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate.” Give …
How do we know he was pope? Like St. Linus before him, St. Cletus is identified by St. Irenaeus in his work Adversus haeresis (“Against Heresy”). Give me the scoop on Cletus. Pope St. Cletus was pope for 12 years. Early Church writers sometimes used more than one name to identify him – Cletus, Anacletus, …
How do we know he was pope? Like Linus & Cletus before him, Clement I is identified by St. Irenaeus in Adversus haeresis (“Against Heresy”) as the fourth pope and third successor of St. Peter. Ancient writers Eusebius and St. Jerome also put Clement I fourth in line. Give me the scoop on Clement I. …
How do we know he was pope? Like his three predecessors, St. Evaristus is identified by St. Irenaeus in his work Adversus haeresis (“Against Heresy”) as the fifth pope and fourth successor of St. Peter. Ancient writer Hippolytus also identifies Evaristus as fifth in line. Give me the scoop on Evaristus. Honestly, we don’t know …
How do we know he was pope? Like his four predecessors, St. Alexander I is identified by St. Irenaeus in his work Adversus haeresis (“Against Heresy”) as the sixth pope and fifth successor of St. Peter. (not to sound like a broken record…) Give me the scoop on Alexander I. Unfortunately, there’s not a whole …
How do we know he was pope? (You guessed it…) St. Irenaeus marks St. Sixtus I as the seventh pope and sixth successor of St. Peter in Adversus haeresis (“Against Heresy”), preceded by Alexander and succeeded by Telesphorus. Give me the scoop on Sixtus I. Sixtus I was Roman by birth and of Greek descent, …
How do we know he was pope? St. Irenaeus (seriously, good thing he wrote this stuff down…) identified St. Telesphorus as Pope No. 8 and the seventh successor of St. Peter in Adversus haeresis (“Against Heresy”). Give me the scoop on Telesphorus. He was born in Terranuova, a little town on the tip of Italy’s …
How do we know he was pope? Having documented every pope (12) up to his lifetime, St. Irenaeus identified St. Hyginus as the eighth successor of St. Peter in Adversus haeresis (“Against Heresy”). Give me the scoop on Hyginus. He was Greek by birth, according to the Liber Pontificalis, but otherwise little else is known …
How do we know he was pope? A second-century document called the Muratorian Fragment — which also contains the oldest known list of New Testament books — reads, “in our times, while bishop Pius … was occupying the chair of the church of the city of Rome.” St. Irenaeus also lists Pius I in Adversus …
How do we know he was pope? Like his predecessors before him, Anicetus is identified as the 10th successor of St. Peter and 11th Bishop of Rome by St. Irenaeus in Adversus haeresis. Give me the scoop on Anicetus. Anicetus was Syrian by birth, according to the Liber Pontificalis (an early “who’s who” papal history …