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Revision as of 01:19, 2 July 2006 by Kemet (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Was he the first black Pope?
He was White actually.
Not Actually!
Pope Victor looked like the people and ancestry of the land from which he came. "Africa". The Syrians, Greeks and Jews which comprised some of the early popes looked like their ancestry as well. The Arian rise in the Catholic Church didn't begin until the latter part of the third century. Even the Roman Empire wasn't converted at large until the fourth century. The first two centuries Catholicism was supported largly by the churches in Africa by of course, "African" people. People of African lineage were involved from the beginning. Refer to ("The Oxford Dictionary of The Popes" Oxford University Press, 1986) for proof that Catholicism is really a world religion. For other blacks popes you should see (Liber Pontificalis Book of the Popes) p. 17 for Victor; p. 40 for Melchiades, sometimes called Miltiades, under whose reign Rome was converted to Catholicism; p.110 for Gelasius, L.R. Loomis, translator. New York 1916. See also (100 Amazing Facts About The Negro With Complete Proof, J. A. Rogers, 1936.) Submitted by Tom Bailey.
- Yes actually, Tom Bailey. Africans were indeed involved in the Catholic Church from the beginning, but not black Africans. The people of North Africa are white, and Catholicism didn't spread to Sub-Saharan Africa until the European Age of Exploration brought it there. Don't cite fringe scholars like J.A. Rogers to support your mythistory, because it only discredits you. --Jugbo
- Actually, Ethiopians were Christians centuries before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and they are certainly sub-Saharan Africans (and were depicted as such least by the time of the ancient Greeks). Christianity became the state religions of the Roman Empire and Ethiopia very close in time (fourth and fifth centuries, respectively). Ethiopian Christianity spread from Egypt, where the Coptics were established by the second century BCE. This isn't fringe scholarship, unless you wish to describe Church-supported scholarship (which acknowledges this) of the past several hundred years as such. As for the "whiteness" (if you can describe what that is) of North Africans, they, like all Mediterranean groups, have been a melting pot of Caucasians and sub-Saharan Africans for thousands of years, showing a range of "racial" features. Kemet 00:57, 2 July 2006 (UTC)