San Sisto Vecchio
The Basilica of San Sisto Vecchio (in Via Appia) is one of the over sixty minor basilicas among the churches of Rome, and a titular church since 600 AD. As such, it is connected to the title of a Cardinal priest, currently Antoine Kambanda. Basilica. The Basilica was constructed in the fourth century and is recorded as the "Titulus Crescentianae", thus relating the church to a certain Crescentia (possibly a Roman woman who founded the church.) According to tradition, the church was established by Pope Anastasius I (399–401). The church is dedicated to Pope St. Sixtus II  and houses his relics (transferred there from the Catacomb of Callixtus in the sixth century.) San Sisto was rebuilt in the early 13th century by Pope Innocent III. The current church is the result of the restorations of Pope Benedict XIII in the 18th century, which left only the bell tower and the apse from the medieval church. A 13th-century fresco cycle depicting scenes from the New Testament and the Apocrypha has been preserved. Pope Honorius III entrusted the reform of the monastery at San Sisto Vecchio to Saint Dominic in the 1220s, intending it as part of the  reformation of women's religious life in Rome. In 1219 Honorius then invited Dominic and his companions to take up permanent residence at the ancient Roman basilica of Santa Sabina, which they did in the early 1220. After that they founded a convent and "studium" on June 5, 1222, thus forming the original "studium" of the Dominican Order in Rome, out of which the 16th-century College of Saint Thomas at Santa Maria sopra Minerva and the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas ("Angelicum") would grow. Dominican nuns still occupy the monastery at San Sisto Vecchio. Cardinal protectors. The following  persons are known to have been Cardinal priests of S. Sisto (italics are used to denote special cases):