Saint of the Day – 10 January – St Pope Agatho (Died 681)

Saint of the Day – 10 January – St Pope Agatho (Died 681) Bishop of Rome from 27 June 678 (at this time over 100 years old) until his death on 10 January 681. Born in Sicily of Greek parentage, probably in Palermo of which City he is the Patron. Known for his affability and charity, on account of the many miracles attributed to his intercession, he has been styled as “Thaumaturgus or Wonderworker.” Also known as – Agathon, Agatone, Agathonius.

The Roman Martyrology reads today: “At Rome, the Pope, St Agatho, who terminated a liferemarkable for sanctity and learning by a holy death.”

Agatho was originally a Benedictine Monk at St Hermes in Palermo and there is good authority that he was more than 100 years old when, in 678, he ascended the Papal Chair asthe successor to Pope Donus.

Shortly after Agatho became the Supreme Pontiff, Saint Wilfred, Archbishop of York, who had been unjustly and uncanonically deposed from his See by Theodore of Canterbury, arrived in Rome to invoke the authority of the Holy See on his behalf. At a Synod which Pope Agatho convoked in the Lateran to investigate the affair, Wilfred was restored to his See.

The main event of Agatho’s Pontificate remains however, the Sixth Ecumenical Council, held in Constantinople in 680, at which the Papal Legates presided and which practically ended the Monothelite heresy. Before the Decrees of the Council arrived in Rome for the approval of the Pope, Agatho had died on 10 January 681 and was laid to rest in St Peter’s Old Basilica.

His memory is still wonderfully celebrated in Greece.