The pope who was inaugurated by a bird
January 20 marks the death and feast day of Pope St. Fabian, a 3rd-Century pontiff who was elected in the strangest of ways.
250 AD
Fabian was a farmer by trade, having been born likely somewhere around the turn of the 3rd Century. He was also a layman, but other than that next to nothing is known about his prior life.
After the death of Pope St. Anterus, in 236 AD, Fabian traveled into Rome from his farm outside the city, with a handful of others, to attend the election to select a new pope. In all likelihood, Fabian and his friends were mere spectators, all but grabbing their popcorn and settling into the back row to watch the festivities.
Back in those days, there were no cardinals, and the Church was still relatively small, so it was the Roman clergy and Roman faithful who would come together to elect a new Bishop of Rome. St. Eusebius of Caesarea, the Church’s first historian, recounted that over the course of nearly two weeks, many notable churchmen were proposed, but none were considered worthy.
Eusebius said that Fabian, “was on the mind of none” when the unthinkable happened.
Eusebius, who was writing in the early 4th Century, barely 75 years after Fabian’s death, went on:
Suddenly out of the blue a dove fluttered down and perched on his head (the story goes on), plainly following the example of the descent upon the Saviour of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. At this, as if moved by one divine inspiration, with the utmost enthusiasm and complete unanimity the whole meeting shouted that he was the man, and then and there seized him and set him on the bishop's throne.
So basically everyone went nuts. Probably equal parts noticing a sign from the Lord when they saw it, and breathing a sigh of relief that they didn’t have to stay for a 14th day.
Mercifully, Fabian’s reign saw very little religious persecution, in a time when it was still technically illegal to be a Christian. The Roman government was very lenient toward the Church, so much so that Fabian actually had a bit of influence in the Roman court, which he used to return the bodies of two saints – Pope St. Pontian, Fabian’s predecessor’s predecessor, and St. Hippolytus, an antipope who repented of error before his death -- from the salt mines in Sardinia, where both had been exiled and sentenced to hard labor.
Though we don’t know how, it’s clear that Fabian somehow was friends with the emperor, Philip the Arab, since it was only he who could approve the bodies being exhumed and brought back to Rome.
Around the year 245, Fabian may have sent out the men known as the “apostles to the Gauls” – seven bishops from Rome – to evangelize what’s now modern-day France. Included in that seven was reportedly St. Denis, who went to Paris and was eventually martyred by beheading, and afterward famously picked up his head and walked several miles while preaching on repentance! Even to this day, St. Denis is depicted standing with a bishop’s mitre under one arm, holding his head. And people say Catholicism’s boring.
Fabian also seemed to have been chummy with St. Cyprian, who became the bishop of Carthage during Fabian’s reign. Cyprian and Fabian joined forces to condemn a bishop named Privatus in a new heresy that had sprung up, likely related to Privatus not wanting to grant absolution to those Christians who had given in to Roman persecution and lapsed in their faith.
It was soon afterward that Emperor Philip was killed by a usurper name Decius. Decius was (obviously) no fan of Philip, and by extension was no fan of Christians. In 250, Decius ushered in what turned out to be the most intense and brutal persecution of Christians to date, where Christians were demanded to sacrifice to the emperor or face death. Pope Fabian, as it turned out, was one of the early victims, earning his crown of martyrdom by beheading. His relics were taken to the Catacomb of St. Callixtus, next to several other of his papal brethren, but his remains were moved to the Basilica of St. Sebastian in Rome in the 1700s. Owing especially to the manner of his death, Fabian was venerated as a saint almost immediately thereafter.
Fabian’s old pal St. Cyprian, who himself had to go into hiding to avoid the persecution, wrote a letter to Pope Cornelius, Fabian’s successor, after the pope’s untimely death, praising the holiness and virtue of his late friend.
Cornelius wrote:
When the report of the departure of the excellent man, my colleague, was still uncertain among us, my beloved brethren, and I was wavering doubtfully in my opinion on the matter, I received a letter sent to me from you by Crementius the sub-deacon, in which I was fully informed of his glorious end; and I rejoiced greatly that the integrity of his administration had been matched by the nobility of his end.
Fabian’s greatest achievement, and his legacy which stretches all the way to us in the 21st Century, has to do with that sweet smelling oil that makes new parents not want to bathe their baptized babies for as long as possible. I’m talking, of course, about Chrism oil, the oil used at baptism, confirmation, and Holy Orders, and also in the consecration of churches and altars, among other things.
Fabian, in a letter titled the Second Epistle to All the Bishops of the East, gives us instructions for how to care for Chrism oil and, more importantly, where it came from. It should be no surprise that Chrism oil was given to the church by Christ himself, as Fabian recounts,
For on that day the Lord Jesus, after supping with His disciples, and washing their feet, according to the tradition which our predecessors received from the holy apostles and left to us, taught them to prepare the chrism.
Fabian went on to inform the Church that Chrism is meant to be prepared and blessed every year – not every two years or three years or never – and it’s a tradition that extends to this day, signified by the annual Chrism Mass that takes place in every diocese around the globe on (typically) Holy Thursday morning.
1958 AD
Also on this day, 17 centuries hence, was an address to large families by Pope Pius XII. The full address is well worth a read, but here’s a particularly good snippet:
A large, well-ordered family is a kind of visible shrine: the sacrament of Baptism is not an exceptional event for them but something constantly renewing the joy and grace of the Lord. The series of happy pilgrimages to the Baptismal font is not yet finished when a new one to Confirmation and first Communion begins, aglow with the same innocence. The youngest of the children will scarcely have put away his little white suit among the dearest memories of life, when the first wedding veil appears to bring parents, children, and new relatives together at the foot of the altar. More marriages, more Baptisms, more first Communions follow each other like ever-new springtimes that, in a sense, make the visits of God and of His grace to the home unending.