St. Titus, Bishop of Crete

He was a Greek and a Gentile by birth, converted through Paul, who calls him his true child according to a common faith. When Paul went up to Jerusalem to lay his gospel before the pillars of the Church he took Titus with him, and the fact that Titus was not compelled to be circumcised is the point Paul makes when he tells the story in Galatians. The Church's decision that a Gentile need not first become a Jew was made with him standing there.

Afterward he is the man Paul sends when a situation has gone wrong. When the correspondence with Corinth reached its worst it was Titus who went, Titus who got the church back, and Titus whose return Paul describes with visible relief. He was also given charge of the collection for the poor of Jerusalem, which meant carrying other people's money a long way, and Paul's language about the arrangements is that of a man who intends to make an accusation of embezzlement impossible.

Paul left him in Crete, as the first chapter of the epistle says, to set in order the things that were lacking and to appoint presbyters in every city. The letter is short and unsentimental: qualifications for presbyters and bishops, a local reputation for lying that Paul quotes a Cretan poet about, and then the relation between what a Christian believes and how a Christian behaves in an ordinary household.

He was later sent from Nicopolis to Dalmatia, which is the last thing the New Testament says of him. The tradition brings him back to Crete and keeps him there as bishop of Gortyna, the Roman capital of the island, into great old age, and says he died in peace in his nineties.

The ruins of the basilica of St. Titus at Gortyna are still standing, and his head is venerated at Heraklion, returned from Venice in 1966 after seven centuries. St. John Chrysostom's six homilies on the epistle written to him are in this app in full. The Church keeps his memory on the twenty fifth of August.