St. Cyprian

Who they were

Cyprian was a wealthy Carthaginian rhetorician who converted in middle age, gave much of his fortune to the poor, and within two years was bishop of one of the great sees of the Latin world.

The Decian persecution of 250 created a crisis the Church had never faced at scale. Enormous numbers of Christians had lapsed, sacrificing or buying certificates saying they had, and when the storm passed they stood at the doors asking to come home. The rigorists answered never, holding that the Church had no power to readmit the fallen. Cyprian, with Pope Cornelius, answered together with the position that became simply the Catholic one: penance, then peace, because the Church is a hospital and not a museum of the unbroken. Their surviving correspondence shows the alliance warm and practical. In 258 Cyprian was beheaded at Carthage, greeting his death sentence with Deo gratias, thanks be to God, and dying before his people with such composed dignity that the proconsul's own record reads like an act of veneration.

Why people turn to St. Cyprian

Everyone coming back: the lapsed, the long away, the person who assumes the door closed behind them. And leaders under pressure to choose between rigour and mercy, since two bishops chose together and the Church followed them.

How to ask their intercession

If you are the one returning, his whole case was that the door opens. Walk through it. If you are praying someone back, ask him with St. Monica, by name.