Pope Francis explains gift of
relics in letter to Ecumenical Patriarch
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| Popw Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew embrace in the Holy Land, May 2014 |
Pope Francis writes to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew,
Archbishop of Constantinople, and explains the motivation behind his gift of a
portion of the relics of Saint Peter.
By Vatican News
Pope Francis has written to the Ecumenical Patriarch,
Bartholomew, in order, as the Pope says in his letter, “to explain more fully
the gift of some fragments of the relics of the Apostle Peter that I presented
to Your Holiness”.
The background to the gift
In the letter to the Orthodox Archbishop of Constantinople,
Pope Francis reviews what he calls “the uninterrupted tradition of the Roman
Church” which “has always testified that the Apostle Peter, after his martyrdom
in the Circus of Nero, was buried in the adjoining necropolis on the Vatican
Hill”.
The Pope goes on to recount how the tomb “quickly became a
place of pilgrimage for the faithful from every part of the Christian world”,
and how, later, the Emperor Constantine erected the Basilica dedicated to St
Peter over the site.
The discovery of the bones
The letter goes on to explain how, in June 1939, immediately
following his election, Pope Pius XII decided to undertake excavations beneath
the Vatican Basilica. These works “led first to the discovery of the exact
burial place of the Apostle and later, in 1952, to the discovery, under the
high altar of the Basilica, of a funerary niche attached to a red wall dated to
the year 150 and covered with precious graffiti, including one of fundamental
importance which reads, in Greek, Πετρος ενι (“Peter is here”). This contained
bones that can quite reasonably be considered those of the Apostle Peter”.
These relics are now enshrined in the necropolis under Saint
Peter’s Basilica.
The nine fragments
In his letter, Pope Francis describes how Pope Saint Paul VI
had nine fragments removed and placed in the private chapel of the papal
apartment in the Apostolic Palace. The nine fragments were placed in a bronze
case bearing an inscription in Latin, which reads: “Bones found in the earth
beneath the Vatican Basilica considered to be those of Blessed Peter the
Apostle”.
“It was this same case, containing nine fragments of the
bones of the Apostle”, writes Pope Francis, “that I desired to present to Your
Holiness and to the beloved Church of Constantinople over which you preside
with such devotion”.
The gift of Patriarch Athenagoras
Pope Francis shares how he “reflected on our mutual
determination to advance together towards full communion”, and how he “thanked
God for the progress already made since our venerable predecessors met in
Jerusalem over fifty years ago”.
The Pope says he thought of the gift that Patriarch
Athenagoras gave to Pope Paul VI: “an icon depicting the brothers Peter and
Andrew embracing, united in faith and in love of their common Lord”.
This icon, concludes Pope Francis, has become “a prophetic
sign of the restoration of that visible communion between our Churches to which
we aspire and for which we fervently pray and work”.
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