GREGORY II, POPE, saint. — Pontificate from 715 to 731. Born in 669 in Rome, he accompanied Pope Constantine I (708-715) to Constantinople and actively participated in negotiations regarding the approval of the canons of the Trullan Council (692). He was the first Roman to be elevated to the See of St Peter after a long series of foreign pontiffs in the 7th century.
On 15 May 719, Winfrid Boniface received from him the mandate to go to Germany to convert the infidels and baptize them according to the Roman rite. Informed of Boniface’s early apostolic successes, the same Pontiff consecrated him bishop on 30 November 722, binding him to the Roman See by the oath of the bishops of the metropolitan province of Rome. The Benedictine Order, to which St Boniface belonged, was the object of particular care on the part of the Pope. Five years of his pontificate, from 726 onwards, were occupied by the struggle with the iconoclastic Emperor Leo III the Isaurian. When the latter attempted to impose a census on the Roman duchy, Gregory II openly resisted. With this act he took part in the Italian national revolution against the despotic Byzantine government. That Gregory II, accused of crimen laesae maiestatis, did not suffer the fate of Pope Martin I was due not only to the Roman militia but also to the neighbouring Lombard dukes, with whom he cultivated good relations.
This conflict, at first only political, soon became religious as well because of the dispute over the veneration of sacred images, in which Gregory II, with full justification, opposed Eastern caesaropapism. Pope Gregory II sent two letters to the Emperor, the authenticity of which was proved by E. Caspar. With courageous language the Pope wrote, among other things: «All the West has great confidence in us and in Him whose image you seek to destroy, in St Peter, whom all the kingdoms of the West venerate as a god. We shall take the road to the farthest regions of the West to those who seek holy baptism». He was, however, prevented from undertaking this journey by his death in February 731. But the fact that he formulated and expressed such a plan, an indication of the clear-sightedness with which he foresaw the mission of the Church at that historical moment, shows Gregory II to have been the greatest Roman pontiff of the 8th century. His feast is celebrated on 13 February.