From a Young Slave From Rome to Pope Callistus I to Facing the first Anti-Pope to Martyred While Christian

October 14 is Feast Day of Pope Callistus I. He lived during the reigns of the Roman emperors Elagabalus and Alexander Severus. Eusebius and the Liberian catalogue list his episcopate as having lasted five years (217–222). 

Callixtus I's contemporaries and enemies include Tertullian and Hippolytus of Rome, the author of Philosophumena, writes that denounced as a Christian, Callixtus was sentenced to work in the mines of Sardinia. He was released with other Christians at the request of Hyacinthus, a eunuch presbyter, who represented Marcia, the favorite mistress of Emperor Commodus. At this time his health was so weakened that his fellow Christians sent him to Antium to recuperate and he was given a pension by Pope Victor I.

In 199, Callixtus was ordained a deacon by Pope Zephyrinus and appointed superintendent of the Christian cemetery on the Appian Way. That place, which is to this day called the Catacombs of St. Callixtus, became the burial-ground of many popes and was the first land property owned by the Church.

In 217, when Callixtus followed Zephyrinus as Bishop of Rome, he started to admit into the Church converts from sects or schisms who had not done penance. He fought with success the heretics, and established the practice of absolution of all sins, including adultery and murder. Hippolytus found Callixtus's policy of extending forgiveness of sins to cover sexual transgressions shockingly lax and denounced him for allowing believers to regularize liaisons with their own slaves by recognizing them as valid marriages..As a consequence also of doctrinal differences, Hippolytus was elected as a rival bishop of Rome, the first antipope.

Prayer to Saint Callistus

O God, who raised up Pope Saint Callistus the First to serve the Church and attend devoutly to Christ's faithful departed, strengthen us, we pray, by his witness to the faith, so that, rescued from the slavery of corruption, we may merit an incorruptible inheritance. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.