Rufus of Thebes

Saint Rufus the Apostle is numbered in Orthodox tradition among the Seventy Apostles and was, according to tradition, bishop of Thebes in Greece. The Church remembers him on 8 April, and on 4 January at the Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles.

According to tradition he was the son of Simon of Cyrene, who carried the cross of Christ, as the Gospel of Mark says. The Rufus named by the Apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Romans is usually taken to be the same: "Salute Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother and mine" (Romans 16:13). Other scholars say the Rufus of Romans could well be the one mentioned in Mark. Tradition calls him bishop of Thebes in Greece. Lucius Dexter says he was bishop in Spain, in Catalonia, and that the Spaniards regard him as their apostle. No other details are known with certainty.

In the hymns of the Church he is praised in the same synaxis with Herodion, Agabus, Asyncritus, Phlegon and Hermes. The troparion says: "Let us praise in hymns the six-⁠fold choir of Apostles: Herodion and Agabus, Rufus, Asyncritus, Phlegon and holy Hermes, who ever entreat the Trinity for our souls."