Potamione di Agrigento

Who they were

Bishop of Agrigento in the 6th century, Potamione is remembered for having baptised, instructed and admitted to the clergy the young Gregory who would become pope, according to the biography of Gregory written by the abbot Leontius, which tells how Potamione entrusted the boy to the archdeacon Donatus for further formation. Since Gregory was elected pope around 590, it is thought Potamione held the see of Agrigento for about thirty years, roughly from 560 to 590.

He is depicted receiving the young Gregory in a series of bishops' portraits in the hall of the episcopal palace at Agrigento, and in the cathedral baptising him and admitting him among the clergy; he also appears on a ceiling beam of the cathedral and among the seven sainted bishops of Agrigento in a room of the episcopal palace. His feast is marked in the calendar of the Church of Agrigento on 29 January.

The miracles

There was never a formal cause: he has been honoured as a saint since before the Church's formal processes began.

Why that counted as sanctity

Bishop of Agrigento remembered for baptising and forming the future pope Gregory in his youth; feast 29 January.