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The popes · No. 1 of 267

St Peter

A fisherman from Galilee, a promise on a hillside, and a grave on the Vatican Hill.

Pope 32 to 67

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The Niche of the Pallia in the Vatican Grottoes, directly above the place venerated as Peter’s grave: a gold mosaic of Christ behind a bronze grille.

Dnalor 01, 2015. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 at.

Home / The popes / St Peter

Caesarea Philippi, around AD 30

Jesus asks his friends a dangerous question: who do you say that I am?1

A fisherman named Simon answers first, and Jesus gives him a new name, Peter, the rock.2

Every pope since stands on that one exchange. So it is worth knowing the man who started it.

01St Peter

The rock who sank

Simon was a fisherman from Bethsaida, called with his brother Andrew from their nets on the Sea of Galilee.34

He walked on the water towards Jesus, then looked at the wind and began to sink.5

On the night Jesus was arrested he denied three times that he even knew him, and then went out and wept bitterly.6

This is not the résumé of a natural leader. It is the résumé of a man who failed in public and was forgiven in public.

After the Resurrection Jesus asked him three times, do you love me, and three times gave him the same task: feed my sheep.7

The Church teaches that Christ made Peter the visible foundation of his Church and entrusted him with the keys.8

02St Peter

The road to Rome

Peter preached at Pentecost, led the first community in Jerusalem, and later wrote to Christians from “Babylon”, an early Christian name for Rome.91011

Ancient writers agree that he died a martyr in Rome under the emperor Nero.11

“Peter was crucified at Rome with his head downwards, as he himself had desired to suffer”

Origen, quoted in the Catholic Encyclopedia11

Around the year 200 a Roman Christian named Gaius told a heretic that he could point to the apostles’ monuments on the Vatican Hill and on the road to Ostia.12

“But I can show the trophies of the apostles”

Gaius of Rome, around AD 200, in Eusebius12
Vaticano - Basilica di San Pietro (40964262100)
The Confessio of St Peter’s Basilica: steps lead down towards the grave beneath the high altar. Fred Romero from Paris, France, 2018. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

03St Peter

Why it still matters

The Catholic Church holds that the pope, the Bishop of Rome, is Peter’s successor and the perpetual, visible source of the unity of the bishops and of the faithful.13

Two thousand years later, pilgrims still go down beneath the high altar of St Peter’s to pray near the grave of a fisherman who once sank in a lake.

Next in line came a name almost no one remembers.

Notes

  1. Matthew 16:15, Douay-Rheims. read the chapter
  2. Matthew 16:16-18, Douay-Rheims. read the chapter
  3. John 1:44, Douay-Rheims. read the chapter
  4. Matthew 4:18-20, Douay-Rheims. read the chapter
  5. Matthew 14:29-30, Douay-Rheims. read the chapter
  6. Luke 22:61-62, Douay-Rheims. read the chapter
  7. John 21:15-17, Douay-Rheims. read the chapter
  8. Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 881. vatican.va
  9. Acts 2:14, Douay-Rheims. read the chapter
  10. 1 Peter 5:13, Douay-Rheims. read the chapter
  11. Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), “St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles”. New Advent edition. newadvent.org
  12. Eusebius, Church History, Book II (c. 325). Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 1 (1890). newadvent.org
  13. Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 882. vatican.va

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: Douay-Rheims, Challoner revision (public domain). Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an error.