Cornelius, pope from March 251 to June 253, was confronted with the problem of deciding the Church’s attitude towards Christians who had forsworn their faith under persecution, but who subsequently wanted to return to the fold. Cornelius held that such backsliders could be readmitted after doing appropriate penance. Others, however, led by a brilliant priest called Novatian, considered that those who had betrayed Christ should be permanently anathematised. Cornelius’s predecessor as pope, Fabian, had been one of the first to perish in the persecution ordered by the Emperor Decius in 250.