The appellation of "pope" has been attributed to the Bishop of Alexandria since the episcopate of Heraclas, the thirteenth Bishop of Alexandria. All the clergy of Alexandria and Lower Egypt honored him with the appellation "papas", which means "father", as the senior and elder bishop among all bishops, within the Egyptian province, who are under his jurisdiction, three centuries before it was assumed by Pope John I Bishop of Rome (523–526), who ratified the Alexandrian computation of the date of Easter. Bestowing the title on Rome's pontiff did not strip it from Alexandria's, and the Roman Catholic Church recognizes this ecclesiastical fact.