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Your Holiness, dear Brother,
With deep affection and spiritual closeness, I send you my cordial good
wishes of grace and peace in the love of the Risen Lord. In these past
weeks, I have often thought of writing to you to explain more fully the
gift of some fragments of the relics of the Apostle Peter that I
presented to Your Holiness through the distinguished delegation from the
Ecumenical Patriarchate led by Archbishop Job of Telmessos which took
part in the patronal feast of the Church of Rome.
Your Holiness knows well that the uninterrupted tradition of the Roman
Church has always testified that the Apostle Peter, after his martyrdom
in the Circus of Nero, was buried in the adjoining necropolis of the
Vatican Hill. His tomb quickly became a place of pilgrimage for the
faithful from every part of the Christian world. Later, the Emperor
Constantine erected the Vatican Basilica dedicated to Saint Peter over
the site of the tomb of the Apostle.
In June 1939, immediately following his election, my predecessor Pope
Pius XII decided to undertake excavations beneath the Vatican Basilica.
The works led first to the discovery of the exact burial place of the
Apostle and later, in 1952, to the discovery, under the high altar of
the Basilica, of a funerary niche attached to a red wall dated to the
year 150 and covered with precious graffiti, including one of
fundamental importance which reads, in Greek, Πετρος ευι. This contained
bones that can quite reasonably be considered those of the Apostle
Peter. From those relics, now enshrined in the necropolis under Saint
Peter's Basilica, Pope Saint Paul VI had nine fragments removed for the
private chapel of the papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace.
The nine fragments were placed in a bronze case bearing the inscription,
Ex ossibus quae in Archibasilicae Vaticanae hypogeo inventa Beati Petri
apostoli esse putantur: “Bones found in the earth beneath the Vatican
Basilica considered to be those of Blessed Peter the Apostle”. It was
this same case, containing nine fragments of the bones of the Apostle,
that I desired to present to Your Holiness and to the beloved Church of
Constantinople over which you preside with such devotion.
As I reflected on our mutual determination to advance together towards
full communion, and thanked God for the progress already made since our
venerable predecessors met in Jerusalem over fifty years ago, I thought
of the gift that Patriarch Athenagoras gave to Pope Paul VI: an icon
depicting the brothers Peter and Andrew embracing, united in faith and
in love of their common Lord . This icon that, at the behest of Pope
Paul VI, is displayed today in the Pontifical Council for Promoting
Christian Unity, has become for us a prophetic sign of the restoration
of that visible communion between our Churches to which we aspire and
for which we fervently pray and work. Hence, in the peace born of
prayer, I sensed that it would be highly significant were some fragments
of the relics of the Apostle Peter to be placed beside the relics of
the Apostle Andrew , who is venerated as the heavenly patron of the
Church of Constantinople.
I
sensed that this thought came to me from the Holy Spirit, who in so
many ways prompts Christians to regain that full communion for which our
Lord Jesus Christ prayed on the eve of his glorious Passion (cf. Jn
17:21).
This gesture is intended to be a confirmation of the journey that our
Churches have made in drawing closer to one another: a journey at times
demanding and difficult, yet one accompanied by evident signs of God’s
grace. Pursuing this journey calls above all for spiritual conversion
and renewed fidelity to the Lord who requires on our part greater
commitment and new, courageous steps. Difficulties and disagreements,
now and in the future, must not distract us from our duty and
responsibility as Christians, and particularly as Pastors of the Church,
before God and history.
The joining of the relics of the two brother Apostles can also serve as a
constant reminder and encouragement that, on this continuing journey,
our divergences will no longer stand in the way of our common witness
and our evangelizing mission in the service of a human family that today
is tempted to build a purely secular future, a future without God.
Your Holiness, beloved Brother, I have found great comfort in sharing
these thoughts with you. In the hope of soon encountering you once more,
I ask you to pray for me and to bless me, and I exchange with Your
Holiness a fraternal embrace of peace.
From the Vatican, 30 August 2019
