Felix III, Pope, Saint

FELIX III, Pope. - Strictly speaking he should be called F. II, because the preceding one was an antipope. He reigned from 483 to 492. His father, also named Felix, was a priest of the titular church of Fasciola (Sts. Nereus and Achilleus). From the very first year of his pontificate he witnessed the storm stirred up in Africa by the Vandals against the Catholics, and after the persecution he established in a synod the norms for the readmission of the "lapsi" into the Church.

But the most important event of his pontificate was the consummation of the Eastern schism, called, after its author, the Acacian schism. Having ascended the chair of St. Peter, F. received news of the publication of the Henotikon of the emperor Zeno, and of the intrigues to entrust the Church of Alexandria to the heretic Peter Mongus. John Talaia, the Catholic bishop driven out of Alexandria, came to Rome to obtain justice from the Pontiff. Without hesitation F. immediately sent a mission with numerous letters for Zeno and Acacius for the purpose of defending the Council of Chalcedon and the dogmatic letter of St. Leo the Great, summoning the patriarch of Constantinople Acacius to his tribunal to answer the accusations brought against him by John Talaia. The mission was difficult and delicate: the two legate bishops failed in their mandate and, for money and out of fear, allowed themselves to be dragged along by the schismatics, attending the solemn liturgy celebrated by Acacius, in which the name of Peter Mongus was solemnly inserted into the diptychs. F., informed by the Acoemetae monks loyal to Rome of the defection of the legates, convoked a Synod of 77 bishops in which he deposed the faithless men and excommunicated Acacius. The defender Tutus was charged with bringing the sentence of excommunication to Constantinople; having reached the East, he entered into contact with the monks; these, having learned that Acacius refused to accept the pontifical document, affixed it to his cloak while he was on his way to the temple. Several of those monks paid for their audacity with their lives, others with imprisonment. Tutus too later allowed himself to be corrupted and, having gone over to the schismatics, was deposed and excommunicated by the Pope. Acacius struck F.'s name from the diptychs; the schism came to divide the Eastern Church from Rome. F.'s conduct was justified, since the machinations of the Eastern bishops, intriguing ambitions and supporters of the Monophysite heresy, constituted a perpetual danger to universal peace. F. died on 1 March 492 and was buried in the basilica of St. Paul, because of his family's close ties with the basilica.

Agostino Amore