“This seems to confirm the unanimous and undisputed tradition that these are the mortal remains on the Apostle Paul,” the pontiff said at St Paul’s-Outside-the-Walls, on the eve of the Feasts of St Peter and St Paul celebrated today.
Peter and Paul are revered by Christians as the greatest early missionaries. Converting on the road to Damascus following a blinding vision of Jesus, Paul took the Gospel to pagan Greeks and Romans and met his martyrdom in Rome in about AD 65.
Christian tradition had it that St Paul was buried together with St Peter in a catacomb on the Via Appia, before being moved to the basilica erected in his honour. For centuries it was believed that his remains were buried beneath the altar.
