Pope Telesphorus

Infobox Pope
English name=Saint Telesphorus


birth_name=Telesphorus
term_start=126
term_end=137
predecessor=Sixtus I
successor=Hyginus
birth_date=???
birthplace=Greece
dead=dead|death_date=137
deathplace=Rome, Italy| infobox popestyles
papal name=Pope Telesphorus
dipstyle=His Holiness
offstyle=Your Holiness
relstyle=Holy Father
deathstyle=Saint|

Pope Saint Telesphorus was pope from 126 or 127 to 137 or 138, during the reigns of Roman Emperors Hadrian and Antoninus Pius. He was Greek by birth.

The writer St. Irenaeus of Lyons said that St. Telesphorus suffered martyrdom [* ws|"" in the 1913 "Catholic Encyclopedia"] . In the Roman Martyrology his feast is celebrated on 2 January; [The Telesphorus commemorated on 5 January in the General Roman Calendar as in 1954 was in fact not the Pope but an otherwise unknown African martyr - "Calendarium Romanum" (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1969), p. 112).] the Greek Church celebrates it on 22 February.

The tradition of Christmas Midnight Masses, the celebration of Easter on Sundays, the keeping of a seven-week Lent before Easter and the singing of the Gloria are usually attributed to his pontificate, but some historians doubt that such attributions are accurate.

The Carmelites venerate Telesphorus as a patron saint of the order since some sources depict him as a hermit living on Mount Carmel.

The town of Saint-Télesphore, in the southwestern part of Canada's Quebec province, is named after him.

References

*Attwater, Donald and Catherine Rachel John. "The Penguin Dictionary of Saints". 3rd edition. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. ISBN 0-140-51312-4.
*Kelly, J.N.D. "Oxford Dictionary of Popes." (1986). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

External links

* [http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/01_01_0125-0136-_Telesphorus,_Sanctus,_Martyr.html Opera Omnia]
* [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14477b.htm Catholic Encyclopedia: "Pope St. Telephorus"]