On this day in the year 257 AD, Pope St. Sixtus II was elected to lead the still-illegal Christian Church, but his timing was anything but impeccable. While the Church had indeed grown in its two centuries of existence, it was still time and again the target of persecution by Roman emperors for a wide variety of reasons, and our dear pontiff’s elevation to the Bishopric of Rome coincided with one of the most notorious ones…