"Adultery, fraud, and manslaughter are mortal sins." St. Cyprian of Carthage, "Treatise VII," c. 250 A.D. "The clergyman who is deposed for mortal sin, shall not be excommunicated." St. Basil the ...

Now believed to have been caused by smallpox, the plague was so devastating that it led the bishop of Carthage at the time, Saint Cyprian for whom the pandemic is named, to lament that it could ...