Mark

Saint Mark of Apollonias, Apostle, is called in the New Testament Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, and is numbered among the Seventy apostles.

Mark accompanied Barnabas and Paul on their missionary travels. He set out with them on the first journey but left them partway. When the second was planned, Barnabas and Paul could not agree about whether to take him again, and Barnabas separated from Paul together with Mark. Later Paul appears to have been reconciled to him and mentions him kindly in the Epistle to the Colossians (4:10) and in that to Philemon (1:24).

According to Hippolytus of Rome, in his work on the Seventy, Mark the cousin of Barnabas is distinct from John Mark and from Mark the Evangelist; he was a leader of the apostolic Church and bishop of Apollonia (Apollonia may be in Albania, in Thrace or in Cyrenaica). Some biblical scholars nonetheless identify him with John Mark of Jerusalem. A Catholic lexicon calls him a martyr and sets his commemoration on 16 June, by the Western calendar.