Discovering the Roots of Our Faith

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - April 11, 2008

Besides the celebration of the sacraments, the greatest privilege of my life has been to be a guide to the Vatican Scavi, the Italian name for the excavations underneath St. Peter's Basilica. During my five years as a seminarian and baby priest in Rome, I was blessed with the honor, several times a week, to take small groups of pilgrims —occasionally including cardinals, bishops, Protestant leaders, classic scholars, government leaders, entertainment celebrities, and famous athletes — on an expedition back to the beginning of the Church in Rome. For so many of those I accompanied, it was also a journey to the foundations of their own Christian faith. The Scavi will always be, for that reason, a place of profound conversion and spiritual rebirth.

Each time I lead a pilgrimage to Rome, I'm given the opportunity, by my friend and former boss at the Excavations Office, Paolo Parrotta, to come out of retirement and guide my people through this sacred place. Last week I had the chance to do so once again, for a pilgrimage of American female television, radio and broadcast journalists I had been asked to accompany. Beyond their different personal reasons for making a pilgrimage, these women had a common professional one: to deepen their understanding of the significance of Rome, St. Peter and his successor in Christianity, so that they will be able to communicate these understandings to their readers, listeners and viewers next week when Pope Benedict makes his pilgrimage to the United States. No place was better to help them achieve this objective than their 90 minute adventure through what was discovered underneath St. Peter's Basilica between 1939-1949.

Over the next few weeks, as we prepare for, receive, and give thanks for Pope Benedict's pilgrimage, I'd like to take you in this column on a similar journey, so that you, too, may grow in appreciation for the role of the Pope in the Christian faith and be able to explain his significance to your family members and friends.

A Scavi pilgrimage begins with the recounting of the July 19, 64 AD fire that totally destroyed 10 of 14 sections of the city of Rome and took the lives of many. All fingers were pointing to Nero as the arsonist. Not only had he long made known his desire to rebuild Rome with his name on every building, but during the fire, as Romans sought to douse the flames, they were prevented by imperial guards. Soon a rumor spread that he was in Anzio toasting to the burning of the city of Troy in the 10th century BC. The Roman people were outraged and, as powerful as he was, Nero was in political and physical peril. To divert suspicion from himself, he needed a scapegoat and found one in the early Christian community in Rome. They were popularly known as atheists, because they refused to burn incense to statues representing pagan gods; they were considered cannibals, because on Sundays it was said they convened to eat someone's flesh and drink his blood; and they were also deemed promiscuous, because after their eating human flesh and blood they had agape meals, or "love feasts," which many Romans interpreted to mean orgies.

So ask yourself: if three-fourths of your city had just been burned to the ground, if you had lost many of your loved ones, your home, and your property, and the emperor you suspected may have been behind it was blaming a bunch of atheist, promiscuous cannibals: how likely would you be to send it a generous check to their defense fund?

Nero had found a perfect choice for a scapegoat and a few months after the fire, on October 13, 64 AD, he rounded up the Christians and brought them to the circus in the Vatican named after him and his predecessor Caligula. There he put on a show that the ancient world never forgot. The Roman historian Tacitus was a seven year-old eyewitness of the events. Three decades later, when he wrote his Annals, he recorded:

"In order, if possible, to remove the imputation, Nero determined to transfer the guilt to others. For this purpose he punished, with exquisite torture, a race of men detested for their evil practices, by common appellation called Christians. The name was derived from Christ, who in the reign of Tiberius, suffered under Pontius Pilate, the procurator of Judea. By that event the sect, of which he was the founder, received a blow, which, for a time, checked the growth of the dangerous superstition; but it revived soon after, and spread with recruited vigor, not only in Judea, the soil that gave it birth, but even in the city of Rome…. Nero proceeded with his usual artifice. … A number of Christians were convicted, not upon clear evidence of their having set the city on fire, but rather on account of their sullen [atheistic] hatred of the whole human race. They were put to death with exquisite cruelty, and to their sufferings Nero added mockery and derision. Some were covered with the skins of wild beasts and left to be devoured by dogs; others were nailed to the cross; numbers were burnt alive; and many, covered over with inflammable matter, were lighted up, when the day declined, to serve as torches during the night. For the convenience of seeing this tragic spectacle, the emperor lent his own gardens. He added the sports of the circus, and assisted in person, sometimes driving a chariot, and occasionally mixing with the rabble in the habit of a charioteer. At length the cruelty of these proceedings filled every breast with compassion … as it was obvious that they were suffering, not for the public good, but to glut the rage and cruelty of one man only."

Of the several thousand of our spiritual ancestors killed that day, Peter was chosen to be killed by crucifixion. Christ had prophesied that when he was old, another would stretch out his hands and drag him to a place he didn't want to go (Jn 21:18). As he was dragged into Nero's circus and stretched out toward the Cross, he asked to be crucified upside-down, later Christian sources record, because he didn't consider himself worthy to be crucified right-side-up as the Lord was outside the walls of Jerusalem. Peter's wish was granted. After he died, the early Christians took his body and buried him very quickly nearby, in a pauper's grave, on the steeply sloping Vatican hill to the northern side of the circus.

That's where we will continue the amazing story next week.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.