Celadion of Alexandria

Saint Celadion was the ninth bishop of Alexandria, counting the holy Apostle Mark, and shepherded the Church in the second half of the second century. Little is recorded of him, but the Alexandrian tradition remembers him as a righteous and wise shepherd.

He was born in Alexandria, in Egypt, and was loved by the people for his justice and wisdom. The Coptic tradition says he was chosen patriarch in the year 152, in the reign of the emperor Antoninus Pius. Eusebius of Caesarea, in his Church History, makes him the successor of Marcus II, and in his Chronicle says that he held the see for fourteen years. The dates vary by source: in Jerome's translation of the Chronicle he began in the sixteenth year of Antoninus Pius, and in the Armenian version in the eighteenth. Adding up the figures, several scholars place the start of his ministry in 153.

According to the Alexandrian sources, when he took up the leadership he looked after the works his predecessors had left to him. His days were peaceful and nothing disturbed the peace of the Christians. He shepherded for fourteen years, six months and three days and departed to the Lord in the time of the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, on 9 Epip (16 July), in the year 166 according to the Coptic tradition. Other reckonings place his death in 167 or 169.

He was buried with his predecessors in the church of Boucolou in Alexandria. Bishop Agrippinus succeeded him.