On Your Appointment

Letter 3,13 -to Agnellus, bishop from Fundi, now incardinated in the church of Terracina. November 592

"The joint report of the clergy and people of Terracina gives us very great pleasure for this reason that it testifies to good things concerning your Fraternity. And since, with their Bishop Peter dead, they ask for you to be appointed as their cardinal priest, we foresee that it is necessary for their requests to be complied with, so that they may rejoice in having obtained what they demand, and we may seem to have yielded what is expedient.
Since on account of the disaster of hostilities, nobody has the freedom of living either in your city of your church, we have appointed you accordingly by our authority as cardinal priest of the church of Terracina.
We advise you that you ought to be worried about the souls of the people staying there, with God's protection, so that the treachery of a cunning and perverted enemy cannot harm the flock entrusted to you with any of his tricks.
Rather, let the flock encompassed by the protection of your care be delighted to have deserved the protection of a worthy pastor. Let examples of good living show forth for your people in your acts and let avarice have no power over you."

Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), I: 245.