Cornelius became Pope in A.D. 251 during a period of intense persecution of the Church. He succeeded St. Fabian who was martyred in A.D. 250. It took 16 months for Cornelius to be chosen as St. Fabian’s successor because the persecutions made it difficult for the electors to assemble. One of the problems with which Cornelius had to deal was that of trouble caused within the Church by a person called Novatian. Novatian had been a stoic philosopher and was renowned for his eloquence. For a long time Novatian had one foot in the Church and one foot outside the Church. He was a catechumen which meant that he was taking instruction in the faith, but he did not accept baptism until he was very sick in bed. At that time persons who only accepted baptism when they feared death and who later recovered were known as ‘clinici’ and they were not permitted to be ordained to the priesthood if they subsequently recovered because their conversion carried the hallmarks of pragmatism. Novatian was thus one of the ‘clinici’. Notwithstanding this defect and the fact that he was never Confirmed, he somehow managed to talk the authorities into ordaining him a priest. After his ordination the persecutions continued and in fear of his life he shut himself up inside his house and refused to minister to the Christians under his care. When the persecutions stopped he became an ardent campaigner against the readmission to the Church of those who through fear of the persecutions had denied their Christianity. He short, Novatian was an ambitious schemer who used his skills in oratory to persuade people to accept him as a good priest when he was a hypocrite. He eventually fostered the heresy that the Church did not have the power to forgive sinners in Christ’s name for the sin of apostasy, that is, denying the faith. His next move was to dupe three bishops into ordaining him as the bishop of Rome, that is, as a rival Pope to St. Cornelius. Fortunately one of the bishops realised that he had been duped and confessed his complicity to St. Cornelius. Novatian was thus the first anti-Pope. St. Cyprian who wrote about these times made the following observation about Novatian:

‘He was a deserter of the Church, an enemy to all tenderness, a very murderer of penance, a teacher of pride, a corrupter of the truth, and a destroyer of charity’.

St. Cornelius’s response to the problem created by the apostasy of Christians during the period of persecution was to admit them back into the Church but only after they had publicly repented. Any priests who apostatised through fear were admitted back in but they were no longer permitted to exercise the powers of their priesthood and so became, effectively, members of the laity. St. Cornelius was eventually martyred in A.D. 252. He was so esteemed as a saint that his body was severed into different parts with relics being sent to different monasteries, mostly in France.

 

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