The relics of Saint Peter will be exposed for the veneration of the faithful

For the first time, the relics of Saint Peter, first pope of the Church, will be brought out of the Grottos beneath Saint Peter’s Basilica to be exposed and venerated by the faithful, announced Abp. Rino Fisichella, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization in a column for L’Osservatore Romano.  This “culminating point” of the Year of Faith, at its conclusion, will take place on Sunday, November 24, the Last Sunday after Pentecost, in the presence of Pope Francis, he explained.

“In the underground vaults of the Vatican basilica, the foundations of our faith are located.  The final conclusion of the excavations and studies gives a very clear Yes answer:  the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles has been rediscovered.”  In these words Pius XII announced, at the conclusion of the Jubilee Year 1950, the discovery of the burial place of Peter, which was attested by a very ancient tradition.  Between 1939 and 1949, at the behest of Pius XII, archeological excavations were carried out beneath the main altar of the Vatican basilica.  These were done by four experts in archeology, architecture and art history:  Bruno Maria Apolloni Ghetti, Father Antonio Ferrua, S.J., Enrico Josi, and Father Engelbert Kirschbaum, S.J., under the direction of Monsignor Ludwig Kaas, Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of the Fabric of St. Peter’s Basilica.  The excavations made it possible, first, to uncover the monument of Constantine, a parallelepiped around three meters [10 feet] tall, covered with pavonazzetto marble and porphyry.  The front side of this monument had an opening that corresponds to the present Alcove of the Palliums in the Vatican Grottos;  the back side, partially uncovered, is still visible today behind the altar of the Clementine Chapel.

The priest Gaius had written during the pontificate of Pope Zephyrinus, between 198 and 217:  “I can show you the trophies of the apostles [Peter and Paul].  For if you will go to the Vatican, or to the Ostian way, you will find the trophies of those who laid the foundations of this Church [of Rome]” (in Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, II, 25, 7).  A trophy is a structure, as has often been said in simplifying the reality, but in the proper sense it is the martyr’s body:  the “trophy of victory”.  In that same period, the martyrdom of Peter was attested by Tertullian who, around the year 200 wrote (cf. On the Prescription of the heretics, 36) that the preeminence of Rome is connected with the fact that three apostles, Peter, Paul and John, taught there and that the first two died there as martyrs.  Peter, crucified inverso capite (head down), indeed died in the gardens of Nero, near the Vatican, at the same time as a large crowd of Christians, in the persecution started by the emperor after the conflagration of July 64, A.D., which destroyed a large part of Rome.

The martyrdom of the first Christians in Rome was described by the Roman historian Tacitus:  “First, then, the confessed members of the sect were arrested; next, on their disclosures, vast numbers were convicted, not so much on the count of arson as for hatred of the human race. And derision accompanied their end: they were covered with wild beasts’ skins and torn to death by dogs; or they were fastened on crosses, and, when daylight failed were burned to serve as lamps by night. Nero had offered his Gardens for the spectacle, and gave an exhibition in his Circus, mixing with the crowd in the habit of a charioteer, or mounted on his car. Hence, in spite of a guilt which had earned the most exemplary punishment, there arose a sentiment of pity, due to the impression that they were being sacrificed not for the welfare of the state but to the ferocity of a single man.”  (Annales, XV, 44, 4-5).

The Emperor Constantine, in the second decade of the fourth century, enclosed the burial place of Peter (a ground-level grave, dug near the circus that marked the northern border of Nero’s garden) within a stone monument and, later on, around 320, built a basilica around it.  (Sources : apic/radiovatican/30giorni – DICI no. 285 dated November 22, 2013)