You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute,

an Apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.

Hello, and welcome to Catholic Saints. Today we're going to be talking about the first

apostolic father, the fourth pope, so the third from Peter, Peter, Linus, Cleadis, and Clement.

My name is Dr. Ben Acres. I'm the chief content officer here at the Augustine Institute.

I'm joined with Professor Venestrom, Carl Venestrom, who teaches at our

graduate school. Thanks for joining me, Carl. Yeah, so glad to be here. So we're talking about,

I love the series that we go through with the Saints, because, and you have responded as viewers

and as listeners that you have also enjoyed listening to the Saints and the conversations that we

have with the professors, because the Saints are real historical people that lived at a particular moment.

They had their own challenges, and they had their victories in their life.

And one of the things I love about St. Clement is he's so early to the apostles.

Right.

And we even have like Ironaeus, one of the, you know, early

church doctor and father of the church that writes and says, yeah, he actually met the apostles.

He talked to him. It almost as if he had the ringing of the apostles preaching in his ears.

Yeah, yeah, that's a really beautiful thing. Yeah, you have, yeah, Pope St. Clement the first, and then Ignatius of Antioch, who Ironaeus talks about in similar terms.

He's more connected with John, so you have these different trajectories who can follow.

Yeah, it's this beautiful thing.

We have St. Clement.

He's the first of these popes after Peter that we hear from in the historical record.

And yet the popes before him were serving as popes and anointing the sick and celebrating the Eucharist

...