May 26 -- Feast of Pope Saint Eleuterus

Carl's Jr. -- Eleuterus says "Get some now!"

I consider Pope Eleuterus [I'm trying to ignore the fact that he has a uterus in his name] the patron saint of the bacon double cheeseburger.  He wasn't trying to hasten the age of American cuisine, of course, but he gets a quarter-pound of the credit anyway.

Eleuterus was neither a guileless rookie nor an ambitious prince when he took the papacy.  Elected in AD 174, he had served as a deacon for the two previous popes, Anicetus and Soter.  Moreover, the papacy might have been the pinnacle of the Christian church, but that was an illegal organization whose members were routinely shunned, tortured, and publicly executed.  As a career choice, the risks far outweighed the benefits.

Generic Pope picture?  Used for about eight of them

Eleuterus was wrestling with a host of heterodoxies, or as he called them, heresies.  Prominent among these were the Montanists, the Gnostics, and Christians who maintained that strict adherence to Judaic law was obligatory.  All these were marked by (among other things) their dietary restrictions; the latter group kept kosher, Montanists avoided rich foods, and the Gnostics were vegetarians. 

In an effort to turn up the heat on them (yes, schism and in-fighting is exactly what an outlaw organization needs), Eleuterus issued a reminder of Saint Peter's revelation that no food should be considered impure by humans since God had put it here. This revelation was recorded in Acts 10: 9-16, but I am not sure I concur entirely.  I'm okay with the wild beasts and most birds of the air  (seagull?  you expect me to eat seagull?), but creeping things sound more like food for Alice Cooper than for me.