St Peter’s Tomb
Up high in Michelangelo’s dome in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome is written: Tu es Petrus (You are
Peter), you are Rock. And on this rock I will build my Church, to you I will give the keys of the
kingdom of heaven (Mt 16:18). The letters in this sentence up in the dome are six feet high!
In the 4th century the Emperor Constantine built the original St Peter’s Basilica. Why would he
honor a fisherman from the rural area of Galilee on the fringes of the Empire? How did that
roughneck fisherman end up getting buried on Vatican Hill in Rome? Why for over 1900 years
have pilgrims from all over the world traveled to venerate this man’s remains? The answer,
someone wrote is that Catholicism doesn’t rest on a myth. It rests on apostolic foundations. And
those foundations don’t exist in our minds:
They exist, quite literally, in reality. Real things happened to real people who made real, life-and-death
decisions — and staked their lives — not on stories or fables but on what they had come to know as the
truth. Beneath the layers of encrusted tradition and pious storytelling, there is something real, something
you can touch, at the bottom of the bottom line of Catholic faith. (George Weigel)
What’s at the bottom of the bottom? Peter’s bones. They’re directly under the high altar in St Peter’s
Basilica in Rome today. In the 1500’s St Peter’s Basilica, standing for over a millennium was in need of
major repair. The decision was made to raze it and build a new St Peter’s, the magnificent one we have
today. Its construction took 120 years, 20 popes and 10 architects. Amidst all that building they
neglected to secure Peter’s tomb. They knew the high altar in the old basilica was built over his tomb so
that’s where they placed the new high altar and just assumed Peter’s tomb was down below.
In 1939 Pope Pius XI died. His beautiful coffin was brought to St Peter’s to be placed in the crypt of the
church but it was too big and heavy. Pope Pius XII ordered that the undercroft, the cellar floor be
lowered to make more room. So workers started digging and by accident they came upon an ancient
graveyard. World War II was going on at the time, so the pope commissioned a semi-secret excavation,
which he funded himself. They eventually found a small city of the dead, complete with streets, below
the foundation of St Peters. They found a shrine with an altar and a grave that all the other graves seemed
to radiate toward. They found some graffiti that said “Peter is here.”
The saintly Pope Pius XII had the bones analyzed. He took a chance here because opponents of the
Church have long argued that Peter never made it to Rome (because it’s not in the Bible). But you see if
Peter didn’t go to Rome than he wasn’t the first pope and then the papacy and consequently Catholicism
is all based on a lie, a myth.
In 1968 Pope Paul VI declared that the bones found way down directly under the high altar at St Peter’s
Basilica were in fact St Peter’s bones. They are from a Semitic man in his 60’s. Interestingly enough
fragments from the various bones of the body are there --- except for the feet. There’s no feet. It was
easier to remove a crucified man from his cross by chopping off his feet.
Beneath the layers of encrusted tradition and pious storytelling, there is something real, something you
can touch, at the bottom of the bottom line of Catholic faith.
.