Paul VI's and the Church's Happy News

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - May 9, 2008

Today we finish the series on the Vatican Scavi. I began the series five weeks ago, as we were waiting for the arrival of Pope Benedict, in order to buttress the faith of Catholics in the significance and historical reality of the papacy Christ established.

From my many years working with pilgrims to Rome, I've witnessed that the tears and the chills a typical Catholic experiences in the presence of the Pope exceed what normally occurs when one is in the presence of someone merely holy, important and famous. I've concluded that one of the reasons why so many are affected — myself among them! — is due to the associations the Pope elicits deep within us. His presence is a palpable connection to the existence of St. Peter, and St. Peter's existence is a tangible bond to Jesus Christ. The pope's presence, in other words, helps Catholics to rediscover that the truths of the faith we learned as children are not in the category of the tooth fairy but of living history.

I've been very happy to learn, based on the many emails I've already received about this brief series, that these conclusions are still valid!

We left off last week in 1968 with the evidence before Pope Paul VI. He knew that there was no way he could determine with absolute certainty the identity of the bones found within the graffiti wall's repository. Even if we used the greatest tool of identification we have in our forensic arsenal today, DNA testing — which was not available to Paul VI 40 years ago — the results would do us little good, because we don't have any DNA to which to compare the findings. Among all the treasures of the Vatican reliquaries, there are, unfortunately, no petrine hairbrushes!

But while absolute certainty about the identification of the remains is scientifically impossible, the pope and his scientific and theological advisors, looking at all the anatomical, architectural, analytical and epigraphal evidence, were moved, according to simple common sense, to an almost inexorable conclusion. They determined that the odds that the remains in the repository would be of another man who died between the ages of 65-70, with no foot bones, whose body decomposed in dirt matching Peter's grave, were enveloped in royal fabrics after much of the skeleton had decomposed, placed in a repository next to an inscription saying "Peter is here," and found within an asymmetrical buttressing wall that had no reason to remain would be very small indeed.

So during a papal audience on June 26, 1968, Paul VI announced to the world:

"In these last years, mention has often been made of the 'victory monuments' which without a doubt refer to the tombs of the two martyred Apostles [Peter and Paul], which Gaius said were already the object of veneration in the second century. This led to a passionate interest in the Scavi that Pope Pius XII … ordered to be done under the main altar of the 'confession' of St. Peter's Basilica, to better identify the tomb of the Apostle on top of which and in whose honor this basilica has been built. These most difficult and precise excavations were done in the 40s and 50s and led to incredibly important archaeological findings… Pope Pius XII, in his 1950 Christmas radio message, said, 'The essential question is the following: Has the tomb of St. Peter truly been found? The final conclusion of the archeologists and scholars is a most clear 'Yes.' The tomb of the Prince of the Apostles has been found. There is also a second question, dependent on the first, regarding the saint's relics: Have they been found?'" Paul VI noted that Pius XII's response was non-committal.

"New very time-consuming and accurate studies have been done since," Paul VI continued, "with results that, strengthened by the judgment of the talented and prudent people responsible, I positively trust: St. Peter's relics have also been identified in a way I consider convincing… The research, verification, discussions and debate will continue, but it seems that I have a duty, at the present state of archaeological and scientific conclusions, to give you and the Church this happy news, bound as we are to honor the sacred relics that have been subjected to a series of tests to establish their authenticity. In the present case, we must be all the more eager and exultant since we have reason to maintain that we have found a few of the most holy mortal remains of the Prince of the Apostles, Simon, son of Jonah, the fisherman Christ called Peter, whom the Lord chose to be the foundation of his Church and to whom the Lord entrusted the keys of his kingdom, with the mission of shepherding and reuniting his flock."

After the announcement, Paul VI decided to return these sacred remains back to the place they were found, within the buttressing wall repository, where those blessed enough to receive a ticket for a guided visit to the Vatican Scavi can venerate them to this day.

Two questions generally linger for people after hearing this whole story. Why would Peter's have bones been placed in the buttressing wall in the first place? And why would there have been other bones — of two younger men, a woman and some animals — found in Peter's tomb? The most plausible explanation responds to both questions at the same time.

Based on archaeological inscriptions at the Catacombs of St. Sebastian as well as ancient liturgical sources, it seems fairly certain that during the 250s — a decade of two ferocious anti-Christian persecutions — the relics of SS. Peter and Paul were both moved to the Catacombs where they stayed until the inscriptions stopped, about the 320s, when most scholars believe they were returned to their original resting places. If Peter's remains had decomposed so quickly in the damp soil of his tomb, it would have made no sense for the Church to put them back underneath the victory monument, where in another 200 years they would totally disintegrate. It would have made sense to put them in a place where they would be kept dry and safe, like the buttressing wall respository.

Secondly, it seems that the bones found by the excavators in the dirt of Peter's grave were likely decoy bones, either placed there in the 250s to save the life of lapsed Christians who would have confessed the presence of Peter's bones there, or by Constantine's workmen, to prevent any future grave-robbers from getting their hands on Peter's real bones.

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.