Question: Suppose someone was baptized by someone pretending to be a priest. Would it count? How about someone who was a priest, but later renounced the priesthood? Or someone who was faithful, but to one of those versions of Christianity that was later judged to be heretical?
This was the burning question in AD 257, when Pope Saint Sixtus II succeeded Pope Saint Stephen I. In North Africa, they were taking a hard line on this, insisting on re-baptism. In Rome, they were far more tolerant, insisting that baptism was good, no matter who actually splashed the water.
Sixtus had only one year (actually eleven months and six days) as pope and keeping the peace on the baptism question is the only big achievement except his martyrdom. He had the bad luck to be in office when Emperor Valerian decided to kill Christians and confiscate their property. Use of cemeteries was forbidden, but Sixtus was conducting services with four sub-deacons (Januarius, Vincent, Magnus, and Stephen) and two deacons (Felicissimus and Agapitus). The Romans rolled up and killed them all. Another deacon, Saint Laurence, got the sword a couple days later.
The image on the left indicates that Sixtus was originally Greek (Graecus) and had a barber with a sense of humor. The image on the right -- Raphael's Sistine Madonna -- shows Pope Sixtus looking remarkably like Pope Julius II, who coincidentally commissioned the painting. Go figure. The woman on the far right is Saint Barbara; I don't know who modeled for her.
Note: One of my sources says that the Feast of Sixtus used to be on August 6, but it got moved to August 7.
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