St. Celestine of Rome

Celestine was a Roman, raised to the see of the city in 422. His pontificate fell in the decade when the controversy over the Mother of God came to its head. Nestorius, made archbishop of Constantinople in 428, began to preach against the title Theotokos, Mother of God, holding that Mary had borne only the man in whom the Word dwelt.

Cyril of Alexandria wrote to Rome laying the matter before Celestine. In the year 430 Celestine gathered a synod of the Roman Church, examined the teaching of Nestorius, and condemned it, charging Cyril to carry the sentence into effect and to require of Nestorius a recantation within ten days.

When the Emperor Theodosius summoned the Third Ecumenical Council to Ephesus in 431, Celestine sent three legates to represent the Roman Church, with instructions to act in concord with Cyril and to guard the authority of the apostolic see. The council deposed Nestorius and confirmed the title Theotokos as the faith of the Church.

Celestine also sent the bishop Palladius and, by tradition, gave his blessing to the mission of Patrick to Ireland, and acted against the Pelagian teaching in the West. He reposed on the twenty-seventh of July, 432, not long after the council whose judgment he had set in motion.

The Church keeps his memory on the eighth of April. He is honoured among the Fathers of Ephesus as the bishop of the West whose synod first pronounced the sentence that the council confirmed.