The Vatican is planning to end the Year of Faith with an unprecedented display of St Peter’s relics.
It is the first time in history, the bones, believed to be those of first Bishop of Rome’s bones will leave the Vatican Grotto and be on display for public veneration.
Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president for the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, made the announcement in an editorial published in the Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, however exact details are not yet clear.
The bones were discovered during excavations of the necropolis under St Peter’s Basilica in the 1940s near a monument erected in the fourth century to honour St. Peter.
No pope has ever declared the bones to be authentic.
Scientific tests were conducted on the bones in the 1950s and ’60s, and Pope Paul VI said in 1968 that the “relics” of St. Peter had been “identified in a way which we can hold to be convincing.”
The Year of Faith concludes on November 24, Feast of Christ the King.
Sources
- Rome Reports
- CNS
- Image: Flickr