Saint Ignatius of Antioch

Ignatius was bishop of Antioch, the great city where believers were first called Christians, and one of the Apostolic Fathers — the generation that had known the apostles or their circle. Condemned to death under the emperor Trajan, he was taken in chains across Asia Minor to be thrown to the beasts in the Roman arena, and along the way he wrote seven letters to the churches that are among the most precious documents of the early Church. In them he begged the Christians of Rome not to prevent his martyrdom, urged unity around the bishop, and gave us the first recorded use of the phrase “the Catholic Church.”