"We must show to people the lesson and the interpretation of the faith in the most irreprehensible way and remind them that those who outrage even a small one who believes in Christ will undergo an intolerable punishment". For the Pope, this statement by Saint Cyril of Alexandria "remains valid to this day". He said that during today’s general audience, lingering on the "pastors’ duty to preserve the faith of God’s people, especially the faith of the simpler ones". The statement made by Saint Cyril, the protagonist of today’s catechesis, "is the expression of the tradition of the Church, a criterion of the doctrine of the Church", added the Pope, off the cuff. In the Greek East, Cyril was called a "custodian of exactitude", a "custodian of the true faith" and a "seal of the Fathers", evidence of his "consistently taking inspiration from the earlier ecclesiastic authors in order to show the continuity of his theology with tradition". Worshipped as a Saint both in the East and in the West, in 1882 Saint Cyril was proclaimed Doctor of the Church by Leo XIII. Appointed in 412 a young bishop of the influential Church of Alexandria, "he ruled it with great energy for thirty-two years, always aiming at asserting its primacy across the East".
