08/05/2004: "Question of the Day: Was St. Peter really in Rome? Why isn't that in scripture?"

NOTE: If you'd like to submit a question, either post it as a comment in this entry or e-mail me at questions at thecrawfordfamily dot net.

The Catholic Church's believes that Christ ordained St. Peter as the first leader (Pope) of the Church and that the Papacy is the unbroken lineage of St. Peter's successors. One of the accusations made to try and contradict that claim is that St. Peter was never in Rome, the home of Papacy.

Before I go in the specifics of St. Peter being in Rome, it is important to remember that there is nothing special about the city of Rome. It is in truth not critical to prove that St. Peter was in Rome, only that the Pope's that followed him were indeed his successors. The Papacy has not always been centered in Rome. Most notably is that it was in Avignon, France for a couple hundred years during the middle ages when it wasn't safe for the Pope to be in Rome.

Now that I've made it clear that there's nothing special about Rome inherently, there is plenty of evidence that St. Peter was indeed in Rome. I'll start with the most convincing, the words of St. Peter himself in scripture (1st letter of St. Peter, chapter 5, verses 12-14):

"I write you this briefly through Silvanus, whom I consider a faithful brother, exhorting you and testifying that this is the true grace of God. Remain firm in it.
The chosen one at Babylon sends you greeting, as does Mark, my son.
Greet one another with a loving kiss. Peace to all of you who are in Christ."

"Huh?" You say. Well, this is Peter's ending to the letter, his signature so to speak. When he says "The chosen one at Babylon sends you greeting" he's speaking of himself. "OK, that's fine, where's the part about Rome?" you continue. Well, when Peter was writing this, Christians were heavily persecuted. They had to assume that their letters would be intercepted by Romans who were intent on capturing them. Throughout the new testament, and most notably in Revelation (written by St. John), the term Babylon is used to refer to Rome. So, to translate this line to modern english without the code-language, St. Peter says "I, the Pope, send you my greeting from Rome."

Although I could do more to defend this point, since I have more points to make, I'll leave it at that: St. Peter says in his letter that he was writing from Rome.

The second piece of evidence is that no other city claims to be the burial site of St. Peter. While that may not seem very convincing at first, this argument is quite compelling and is similarly used in the case of St. Mary's assumption (no city claims to be her burial site). With most significant early Christians, there are usually multiple places that claim to be the burial site of the person. The problem is never that no one knows where they were buried but that who is right in claiming they know where they're buried. This is not the case with St. Peter as no other location claims to be the burial site of him.

Not convinced by that either? Well it's time to pick up the book "The Bones of St. Peter" by John E. Walsh. In 1940 Pope Pius XII organized an excavation of the catecombs beneath St. Peter's bascilica. During that excavation, the credible Archeologists found what can only be believed to be St. Peter's tomb.

These few arguments are only a few of numerous including writings of other early Church fathers. Particularly considering the lack of evidence placing him anywhere else, there really is no good argument to be made that Peter wasn't the Bishop of Rome at the end of his life and ended it in Marytrdom at the hands of Emperor Nero.