Already, therefore, during the third century, the Bishop of Rome was consolidating a role which was likely to give him a special prominence in Western Churches. The first surviving use of the title ‘papa’ in Rome occurs in the time of Bishop Marcellinus (296–304), in a funerary inscription for his deacon Severus in one of the catacombs in the city.66 There was, after all, no other Church in the West which could lay claim to the burial place of two Apostles and pilgrimage was beginning to draw Christians to Rome.
