The Church celebrates today its two pillars, Saint Peter and Saint Paul, celebrated together since at least the third century. Blessed Cardinal Schuster commented: “Easter was, for our fathers, the greatest solemnity of the liturgical cycle; but for the Romans, in the month of June, there was as it were a second Easter feast, which, if it did not surpass it in splendor, certainly equaled the first. It was the dies natalis of the two Princes of the apostles Peter and Paul, or, to put it better, it was, in their person, the feast of the pontifical primacy, the feast of the Pope, the City of birththe birth day of Christian Rome, the triumph of the Cross over Jupiter, father of thunder, and over his vicars the The Great Pontiffsestablished in the Regia you Forum. »
Peter the fisherman, also called Simon, was chosen by Jesus Christ as the head of the twelve apostles: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Mt, 4, 19); he was also established as the head of the Church: “And I say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Mt, 16, 18).
Peter, as Jesus had predicted, betrayed him three times, for which he repented. After the death and resurrection of Christ, he was the leader of the Christians, first went to Rome in 42 under the emperor Claudius, presided over the council of Jerusalem in 49, then returned to Rome under Nero, establishing that city as the earthly capital of Christianity until the end of time.
Paul, for his part, was a Pharisee and persecuted Christians. He was converted on the road to Damascus and became the most ardent of preachers. Ranked among the Apostles, he also participated in the Council of Jerusalem, made several trips to Greece and the East, establishing Christian communities to which he wrote several letters compiled in the New Testament, and was finally arrested and sent to Rome to be tried.
Peter and Paul both died in Rome, between 64 and 68, during Nero’s persecutions. Peter was crucified at his request upside down, he who did not judge himself worthy of dying like Christ, in the Circus Vaticanus, the location of today’s Saint Peter’s Basilica. Paul was beheaded on the Via Ostiense. Their blood shed faithfully and generously completed the establishment of the nascent Christian community, so well described by Saint Paul: “For all of you who were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is no longer either Jew or Greek; there is no longer either slave or free man; there is neither male nor female: for you are all one person in Christ Jesus” (Ga, III, 27-28).
