{"id":113066,"date":"2019-08-22T00:24:32","date_gmt":"2019-08-22T07:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=113066"},"modified":"2019-07-30T20:44:46","modified_gmt":"2019-07-31T03:44:46","slug":"pope-francis-gives-some-of-peters-relics-to-patriarch-bartholomew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2019\/08\/pope-francis-gives-some-of-peters-relics-to-patriarch-bartholomew.html","title":{"rendered":"Pope Francis Gives Some of Peter’s Relics to Patriarch Bartholomew"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So this happened<\/a> about two months ago on the Feast of Peter and Paul:<\/p>\n

Patriarch Bartholomew had sent a delegation led by Archbishop Job of Telmessos to the Vatican for the feast day celebrations. After the solemn Mass, Pope Francis and Archbishop Job went down to St. Peter\u2019s tomb under the high altar to pray.<\/p>\n

Then, the archbishop recounted, Pope Francis asked him to wait for him because he had a gift for his \u201cbrother\u201d Patriarch Bartholomew. The pope came back and led the archbishop to his little blue Ford Focus and they were driven to the Apostolic Palace.<\/p>\n

They entered the chapel of the old papal apartment, where Pope Francis chose not to live, and \u201cthe pope took the reliquary that his predecessor Paul VI had placed in the little chapel and offered it to his guest,\u201d according to Vatican News.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us, this was an extraordinary and unexpected event that we could not have hoped for,\u201d Vatican News quoted the archbishop as saying.<\/p>\n

He phoned Patriarch Bartholomew as soon as he could to tell him the news.<\/p>\n

Arrangements quickly were made for Msgr. Andrea Palmieri, undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, to accompany the relics to the Phanar, the Orthodox patriarchate\u2019s headquarters in Istanbul.<\/p>\n

It was \u201canother gigantic step toward concrete unity,\u201d Archbishop Job said.<\/p>\n

At a ceremony June 30 to receive the relics and venerate them, Patriarch Bartholomew said, \u201cPope Francis made this grand, fraternal and historic gesture\u201d of giving the Orthodox fragments of the relics of St. Peter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was deeply moved,\u201d the patriarch said, according to the news published on the patriarchate\u2019s Facebook page along with 15 photos. \u201cIt was a brave and bold initiative of Pope Francis.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As is so customary, reaction was swift and severe from Reactionaries and, as is customary for me, I could not and cannot see what the problem is.\u00a0 It was an extraordinary gesture of fraternal love from the Holy Father and it engendered nothing but fraternal love from the recipients of the gift.\u00a0 I cannot imagine Peter himself being anything but delighted by it and since love, not clinging to relics, is the highest virtue of the Faith, what is the trouble?\u00a0 The Church retains other relics of Peter at her eponymous Church (aren\u2019t you impressed that worked \u201ceponymous\u201d into a sentence?) So why are people freaking out, except that anything and everything Francis does is cause for some people to freak out?\u00a0 I think the East and West taking \u201canother gigantic step toward concrete unity\u201d is far, far<\/em> more important than Rome hanging on to every last relic of a saint, even a saint so great as Peter.\u00a0 He was, after all, the bishop of Antioch too.\u00a0 So why not celebrate his spiritual patrimony in the east as well? The unity of the Church is what Jesus prayed for in John 17.<\/p>\n

Remedial reading: Ut Unum Sint<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

PS, for my skeptical readers, there is plenty of evidence<\/a> for thinking that the bones of Peter\u2013carefully preserved and bearing the marks of crucifixion (including missing feet, a common fate for the crucified) and buried in tomb that says \u201cPeter is within\u201d, with a succession of churches built in a weird and awkward location best explained by the fact that early Christians were not morons and knew where their sacred dead were buried\u2013are, in fact, the bones of Peter.\u00a0 It is one of the weirdnesses of modernity that only the archaeology pertaining to saints is presumed to be hinky while the archeology pertaining to Tutankhamen is presumed to be sound.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So this happened about two months ago on the Feast of Peter and Paul: Patriarch Bartholomew had sent a delegation led by Archbishop Job of Telmessos to the Vatican for the feast day celebrations. After the solemn Mass, Pope Francis and Archbishop Job went down to St. Peter\u2019s tomb under the high altar to pray. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[374],"class_list":["post-113066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-pope-francis"],"yoast_head":"\nPope Francis Gives Some of Peter's Relics to Patriarch Bartholomew<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So this happened about two months ago on the Feast of Peter and Paul: Patriarch Bartholomew had sent a delegation led by Archbishop Job of Telmessos to\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2019\/08\/pope-francis-gives-some-of-peters-relics-to-patriarch-bartholomew.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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