Saints Peter and Paul

Apostles

Feast Day

June 29

Life

d. 67

Born

Bethsaida, Galilee (Peter); Tarsus, Cilicia (Paul)

The Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul is one of the oldest and highest feasts of the Roman Calendar, attested in the Depositio Martyrum of 354. It celebrates the two principal Apostles, both martyred at Rome under the persecution of the Emperor Nero, traditionally dated to the year 67.

Saint Peter, born Simon son of John at Bethsaida, was a fisherman of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee, brother of Saint Andrew. Called by Jesus (Matthew 4:18-19), renamed Cephas, the Rock (John 1:42), he was given the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 16:18-19) and was charged after the Resurrection to feed the Lord's lambs and tend his sheep (John 21:15-17). After leading the Jerusalem Church, Antioch, and finally Rome, he was crucified upside-down on the Vatican Hill (according to Eusebius, citing Origen). His tomb beneath Saint Peter's Basilica was identified by archaeological excavations begun by Pius XII in 1939; Pope Saint Paul VI announced on June 26, 1968, that the relics had been authenticated.

Saint Paul, born Saul of Tarsus in Cilicia, a Roman citizen and Pharisee trained under Gamaliel (Acts 22:3), persecuted the Church until his vision of the risen Christ on the road to Damascus (Acts 9). After his conversion he became the Apostle to the Gentiles, undertaking three missionary journeys around the eastern Mediterranean (Acts 13-21) and authoring thirteen epistles in the New Testament canon. Brought to Rome a prisoner about 60 (Acts 28), he was beheaded on the Ostian Way south of the city under Nero. His tomb is venerated under the high altar of the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls; carbon-14 dating announced by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 confirmed first-century relics within the sarcophagus.

The joint Solemnity reflects the second-century inscription of the Roman Canon, the testimony of the priest Gaius (c. 200) on the Roman trophies of the Apostles, and the unbroken tradition of pilgrimage to their tombs. On this day each year the Bishop of Rome confers the pallium on metropolitan archbishops appointed during the previous year.