You're listening to

the Daily Podcasts

the daily podcast for Catholic kids

that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, Spouts.

Today is Thursday, January 16th, 2020.

Today is also the feast day of a pope who died as a martyr.

His name is St. Marcellus I, and he died in the year 309. Now, his is a very interesting story.

He actually became Pope after the office of the papacy was vacant. There was no Pope for three

years. And this is because Christians were suffering such terrible persecution.

In fact, the persecution was so bad that there were hardly any priests remaining.

And very few of them wanted to become the Pope because the Pope was a special target of the Roman Empire.

When the persecution finally settled down a little bit and Pope Marcellus

I was leading the church, he asked those who had avoided martyrdom by apostizing, meaning they

deny Jesus, that they did this to save their lives, but they still wanted to be

Christians. So he was willing to welcome them back if they did penance.

Some of the powerful Christians at the time refused to do penance because it was oftentimes

public and embarrassing. So they refused to do this. They ultimately exiled the Pope and he died

a martyr in exile. So the feast day of St. Marcellus I, is a great reminder of first the

privilege that we have to practice our faith. And secondly, our loyalty to the Pope to follow him and to take his words of advice to heart.

Now, this week on the Catholic Sprouts podcast, we are talking about monastic life.

Today we are talking about prayer, the prayer of monks and religious sisters who live in monasteries. And of course, prayer is the heartbeat of

...