As Peter preached the first sermon on Pentecost, he could hardly have imagined that he was shaping a Catholicism—a new way of life in Christ for all people—that would become Roman. There was nothing Roman about Jesus’ life until His saving death. The cross, Christianity’s central symbol, was a Roman execution device.
But the fact that Rome supplied the cross that redeemed mankind is not the cause of Catholics’ intense veneration of the city, which began just a few decades after Peter’s first sermon.
It comes, rather, from Peter himself, the rock of the Church, whose martyrdom and subsequent burial in Rome sanctified the city and who became the draw of pilgrims for centuries on end. His physical presence beneath the basilica named in his honor emits a holy aura, generates a religious fascination, and inspires a pious hope. To this man, and this man alone, the Son of God gave the keys to the kingdom of Heaven. If we seek him and ask humbly, perhaps he will help us gain admittance to that kingdom.
If Peter hallows Rome, his fellow martyrs add to the city’s cachet. St. Jerome writes that on Sundays, he and his friends would visit the catacombs “to make tours of the tombs of the apostles and martyrs.” The tenth-century poem “O Roma Nobilis” salutes this “most excellent of all cities made red by the martyrs’ rose-colored blood.” Hymns honor particular Roman martyrs: Agnes, Martina, Cosmos, and Damian, whose bones, along with those of so many others, inspire devotion from believers who wish they could have a modicum of the faith these holy ones had.
Yet it is Peter and his successors who today tower as the city’s most alluring draw. Oscar Wilde, though not Catholic (he would convert on his deathbed), captured the faithful’s papal sensibilities in “Rome Unvisited:”
A pilgrim from the northern seas –
What joy for me to seek alone
The wondrous temple and the throne
Of him who holds the awful keys! …O joy to see before I die
The only God-anointed king,
And hear the silver trumpets ring
A triumph as he passes by!
“Did you see the pope?” asks almost every person when responding to a friend who traveled to Rome. The Wednesday papal audience, the Sunday Angelus, major feast days, and the annual Urbi et Orbi address attract throngs to St. Peter’s Square, and, with the possible exception of the Urbi et Orbi, pilgrims come not necessarily to hear the pope, but to see him. What else explains the regular presence of non-Italian speakers at these events?
Like Thomas in the upper room, Catholics long to see for themselves the man wearing the Great Mantle, for in his office as Pontifex Maximus, he embodies the fullness of faith. It is no wonder, then, that after seeing the pope himself, Catholics love visiting the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls to see in one place mosaic portraits of St. Peter and all his 266 successors.
The reigning pope is not the only one who draws pilgrims’ fervor. Pope Leo XIV’s predecessors, whose tombs are scattered around the city, are also recipients of filial devotion. This fact was pressed home to me during Easter week when I saw the extensive line to visit Pope Francis in his newly carved resting place in St. Mary Major Basilica. When it comes to papal tomb visitations, currency helps: Catholics naturally want to see their pope, the man who led the Church of their lifetime. Hence Francis, Benedict XVI, John Paul II, Paul VI, and John XXIII receive far more interest than, say, Benedict XIII (r. 1724-1730, buried in Santa Maria Sopra Minerva), Pope Paul V (r. 1605-1621, buried in Saint Mary Major), or Pope John XIII (r. 965-972, buried in St. Paul Outside the Walls).
Rome and the papacy are intrinsically linked for reasons both holy and practical. The global Church that now selects the sovereign pontiff from anywhere in the world forgets that popes once had a more provincial existence, ruling Rome and her countryside as both spiritual father and temporal king. It was once the task of popes to defend the city and surrounding areas from invaders, to provide sustenance for the poor, and to lead during times of pestilence.
Tensions and even hostility sometimes have existed between Romans and the pope, but he was always their pope, their father, and they loved him—even when he failed in his duty, even when he abandoned the city for residence elsewhere. In these painful moments, the sensus fidelium, led by St. Brigid of Sweden and St. Catherine of Siena, knew better than the pope himself that Rome belongs to the pope and the pope belongs in Rome.
This sensus endures today among pilgrims and among Catholics who will never set foot in the Eternal City. Modern media beams the pope from Rome to every corner of the globe in real time so they, like the Romans of yesteryear, can know him, honor him, and be drawn to him as a shepherd and as a man.
Of course, nothing excites and unites Catholics like the election of a new pope: the white smoke, the resounding bells, the pouring of throngs into St. Peter’s Square, and the pageantry surrounding the revealing of the new pope’s identity are all enmeshed with the city itself. It’s impossible to imagine a new pope stepping forth anywhere except from St. Peter’s Basilica, the grandest church of the city and of the world. At that moment, the successor of St. Peter stands above Peter himself as he imparts his first blessing upon the faithful whom he has been charged to deliver unharmed to God.
At the Last Supper, Jesus instructed Peter: “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren” (Luke 22:32). Peter continues to strengthen his brethren through the Eternal City that, sanctified by his blood, beckons the faithful from across the world to imbibe apostolic fervor and life-giving charity. Jesus may not have been Roman, but the Roman flavor of His Church in the West leads us into the inner mystery of discipleship that Peter embodied in a unique way.
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A fine article, as we expect from Mr Bonagura.
However, I must say that when I visited Santa Maria Maggiore in late October, I didn’t see a single person on line to see the Bergoglian tomb!
I know Jesus Christ, I honor Him, I am drawn to Him, as The Good Shepherd, and as The Everlasting Man, who is God, and my only King.
I do not know the Pontiff Francis, he is an alien man. I do not honor him, I am not drawn to him, I am repulsed by him, and I do not recognize his voice as shepherd. He delivered great harm to the faithful, made a point of harming people. His orchestration of the Pachamama idolatry was blasphemous. His ongoing synod ideology is a fraud against the moral authority of Jesus Christ. His personal relationship and ideological promotion and ecclesial protection of the sociopath sex abuser “Rev.” Rupnik “speaks and spells” nothing other than something deeply sinister. (To say nothing about his identity with Theodore McCarrick, and the derailment of the financial investigation led by Cardinal Pell, and Libero Milone).
I no not know who or what the Pontiff Leo is, and after one year of him, in his swift succession of the Pontiff Francis, I have yet to recognize in his voice the voice of the Good Shepherd. I am appalled to see photographs of him as a priest, kneeling down in idolatry of Pachamama.
As professor Farrow of Canada wrote in these pages during the Bergoglian pontificate, Christ is the Head of the Church, not the pontiff.
The pontiff is a steward. My prayer is that perhaps God may grant us an end to the punishment that was inflicted beginning in 2013.
“I do not know who or what the Pontiff Leo is…”
He’s basically Francis 2.0, a deeply disconcerting realization.
Your beautiful reflection on how Rome beckons the faithful to “imbibe apostolic fervor” brought to mind the history of Don Serafino Falvo. He was an Italian priest whose global charismatic vocation was unexpectedly sparked by a providential encounter with a tourist from Miami, who urged him to contact Father Giorgio del Prizio. In an extraordinary text written for the 1975 international Pentecost gathering at the Catacombs of St. Callixtus, his evocative words captured the profound architectural and spiritual contrast of the Eternal City:“Le tenebre avvolgevano gli archi di trionfo, la Via Sacra, i templi, il Palatino e il Campidoglio, ma nelle Catacombe era pieno meriggio.”(“Darkness enveloped the triumphal arches, the Via Sacra, the temples, the Palatine, and the Capitoline, but in the Catacombs it was high noon.”)There is a striking continuity between that ancient Roman world and our own. The darkness that once shrouded the monuments of imperial pride has returned today in the form of a contemporary, neo-pagan immanentism—a world closed off from the transcendent. Yet, as this quote suggests, the spiritual victory of the nascent Church within imperial Rome does not depend on the approval of the public square. While modern secularism attempts to shroud our world in new shadows, the supernatural light that sustained the martyrs remains untouched, standing as an eternal noon safeguarded in the very soil of the Church.
An aura of identification of Rome as the center of Catholic, universal Christianity, still a disputed question among some scholars on universal Christianity – can be found in the Fathers of the Church. Polycarp, who knew Paul, and Ignatius of Antioch, a friend of Polycarp, Ignatius having expressed words of Rome’s prominence [see extant correspondence in Mike Aquilina’s The Fathers of the Church].
Rome is where the early patriarchs were sent, or were residents of Rome glorified Christ with their martyrdom. Our liturgy celebrates The Martyrs of Rome on June 30. Our Church is said to have been established by the blood of these martyrs mainly during the reign of Nero 68 AD.
Domitian followed Nero and exiled John the Apostle to Patmos. John, who became the Blessed Virgin’s adopted son who cared for her nearby in modern day Turkey.
Now to Fr Stravinskas’ reference to Rome’s Saint Mary Major Basilica.
“The External Façade Mosaic: Located in the upper loggia of the main entrance, this 14th-century mosaic by Filippo Rusuti depicts Christ on a throne. In this grouping, the Apostle John is depicted as one of the fundamental figures flanking the central scene [courtesy of Google AI].
I would have liked to have “seen” Francis, if only to discern a different character than the inextinguishable image I had developed after he first subverted his own authority: “Who Am I to judge?”
Was he as surly and dour-looking as many photos showed him to be? I carry this inerasable effigy: He plods around the altar, moving the heavy burden of his huge bulk, minus a lung. His face shows how onerous he seems to find the chore he performs, celebrating Mass.
I have no desire to go to Rome. Though I can afford the ‘overhyped’ price to see Michaelangelo’s pieta and Sistine chapel ceiling, Bernini’s sculptures, and the Pinacoteca, I hope and trust that I’ll see them (for free) in an eternal future.
Lord, have mercy on us all.
The Institute of Catholic Culture has historian John Pepino, Ph.D., giving a l-hour lecture on how the Roman Empire facilitated Christianity’s spread. The empire’s infrastructure (roads, aqueducts), system of law, and universality of language (Latin and Greek) allowed for relatively safe travel (unless you were a disciple of Christ, like Paul). But even Rome’s persecution of early Christians served to “seed” the growth of the faith. Then Constantine the Great moved the capital of the empire from Rome to Constantinople, but yeah, Peter settled and died in Rome.
https://instituteofcatholicculture.org/events/conquering-the-barbarians
Rome now is the center for the visibilility and the ‘administration’ of the faith but many there often act as if Jerusalem doesn’t/didn’t count for much of anything.