Vatican unveils bone fragments said to be St Peter’s
Pope Francis prays before relics and clutches them during service as they are exhibited publicly for the first time
The Vatican publicly unveiled a handful of bone fragments purportedly belonging to St Peter on Sunday, reviving the scientific debate and tantalising mystery over whether the relics found in a shoe box truly belong to the first pope.
The nine pieces of bone sat nestled like rings in a jewellery box inside a bronze display case on the side of the altar during a Mass commemorating the end of the Vatican’s year-long celebration of the Christian faith. It was the first time they had ever been exhibited in public.
Pope Francis prayed before the fragments at the start of Sunday’s service and then clutched the case in his arms for several minutes after his homily.
No pope has ever definitively declared the fragments to belong to the apostle Peter, but Pope Paul VI in 1968 said fragments found in the necropolis under St Peter’s Basilica were “identified in a way that we can consider convincing”.
Some archaeologists dispute the finding.
But last week, a top Vatican official, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, said it almost doesn’t matter if archaeologists one day definitively determine that the bones aren’t St Peter’s, saying Christians have prayed at St Peter’s tomb for two millennia and will continue to, regardless.
“It’s not as if pilgrims who go to the altar [of St Peter’s tomb] think that in that moment in which they profess their faith that below them are the relics of St Peter, or of another or another still,” he told reporters. “They go there to profess the faith.”