ADEODATUS I (Deusdedit), POPE, saint. — A Roman, son of the subdeacon Stephen, he had been a member of the Roman clergy for forty years when he succeeded Boniface IV after a four-month vacancy and was consecrated on 19 October 615. He received in Rome the patrician and cubicularius Eleutherius, sent by Emperor Heraclius to Ravenna to avenge the murder of the exarch John and to expel the rebel tyrant John of Compsa from Naples. During his pontificate, Rome, politically tranquil, was devastated by an earthquake (August 618), followed by a very severe pestilence. The Pope had, though for a short time, the opportunity to exercise his charity.
The legend tells that he healed the sick, wiping away their foul sores.
He renewed, extending it to all the churches of Rome, the constitution of Leo the Great which ordered the celebration of “a second Mass” in each basilica. The expression is obscure: Duchesne interprets it as the order to celebrate liturgical offices in the evening in addition to the morning Eucharistic ones. He was the first to establish a special distribution of unwithheld silver (rogam unam integram) to each cleric of Rome on the occasion of his funeral. He was buried in the Vatican, and Honorius placed a Latin distich epitaph on his tomb. Although no ancient martyrology records his name, the Church celebrates him as a saint on 8 November. The decrees attributed to him are spurious. Instead, we possess from him the oldest known papal seal: a cylindrical lead tablet which on one side bears the Good Shepherd with the alpha and omega monogram and on the other the inscription: Deusdedit Papa.