Impeccable Shepherd
The memorial of Pope Marcellus I, commemorated by the Roman Martyrology on January 16, belongs to one of the most complex phases in the history of the early Church. The sources that mention him are few and often conflicting, so that his figure emerges more through fragments than through a linear narrative. What is certain is that he was Bishop of Rome at the beginning of the fourth century, that his pontificate was brief, and that he was buried along the Via Salaria, in the Cemetery of Priscilla, after dying while away from the city.