Pope Pius XII said in his Christmas radio message on Dec. 23, 1950: “The essential question is as follows — has the tomb of St. Peter really been found? The final conclusion of the work and studies answers that question with a most clear yes. The tomb of the Prince of the Apostles has been found. A second question, subordinate to the first, concerns the relics of the saint: have they been found?” … New investigations, most patient and accurate, were subsequently carried out with the results that we, comforted by the judgment of qualified, prudent, and competent people, believe are positive. The relics of Saint Peter have been identified in a way we believe convincing… 

[W]e believe it our duty, in the present state of archaeological and scientific conclusions, to give you and the church this happy announcement, bound as we are to honor sacred relics, backed by a reliable proof of their authenticity…  [I]n the present case, we must be all the more eager and exultant when we are right in believing that the few but sacred mortal remains have been traced of the Prince of the Apostles, of Simon son of Jonah, of the fisher-man named Peter by Christ, of he [sic] who was chosen by the Lord to found His church and to whom He entrusted the keys of His kingdom … until His final glorious return. 

The presence of pigs at the most sacred focus of a church such as St. Peter’s is startling, to say the least. When we reflect that Simon Peter was supposed to have been Jewish before converting to Catholicism, the mixing of his alleged remains with those of swine cries out for an explanation. None of the popes, however, has ever even mentioned that pigs were being venerated in their cellar – let alone offered an explanation for this astounding fact.³ (i)  

One box contains the skeleton of a mouse. Perhaps it is being kept as the universal standard church mouse. The rest of the boxes, stowed away to await the Second Coming, contain what arguably may be considered to be the fragmentary remains of a man who was over the age of sixty at the time of his death. 

The bones have been certified to be the veritable remains of the Prince of Apostles himself, St. Peter. That these are the actual remains of St. Peter we cannot doubt: a successor of St. Peter, Pope Paul VI, has confirmed the fact — although he never made it clear how the mouse bones and barnyard cattle parts functioned in Peter when he was alive.⁴ (ii) Most precious among the relics remaining of Peter’s skeleton in the Vatican are 29 fragments of one of his skulls. (St. Peter’s other skull is preserved in a reliquary at the Cathedral of St. John Lateran.) (iii)  

The skeleton and skulls now venerated as the remains of St. Peter are not the only relics of the Prince of Apostles to have been discovered by the Roman Church, however. In 1949,⁵ Vatican archaeologists discovered a different skeleton of the bony saint, several yards away from the wall in which the bones presently worshipped reside. The bones were reported to have been found in a “hypogeum” — apparently a rough cavity hollowed out at the base of a wall coated with red plaster (the so-called Muro Rosso or “Red Wall” against which the graffiti-covered wall abuts, see Fig. 1). They were reported to have been found in “a sepulchral urn of plain terra cotta.” 

The bones were kept for fourteen years by Pope Pius XII himself, in his private apartment. Although he later hedged somewhat concerning the authenticity of the bones, it is obvious that privately he felt they were genuine. After all, his personal physician Dr. Galeazzi-Lisi and several medical experts had studied the bones minutely chez Le Pape and had stated that the bones were those of a man, powerfully built, who had been perhaps sixty-five or seventy years old at death.⁶ If that wasn’t St. Peter, who else could it have been? 

A rather surprising answer to this question was given by Venerando Correnti,⁷ an anthropologist hired by the Vatican in 1956 to study the pope’s prized bones — the ones found in what Pius had certified to be the genuine tomb of St. Peter. Correnti first suspected that something was amiss when he pulled a third fibula from the pile of bones the pontiff had been hoarding for so long. Normal humans, of course, have only two fibulas — one in each leg. Then he discovered five tibias to supplement the three fibulas. This meant that he was dealing with five to eight legs! Although Peter was noted for his aquatic exploits — both as a fisherman and a water-walker — he was never mistaken for an octopus. And so, Correnti quickly must have realized the pope had been guarding the remains of more than one person: two men and an old woman, he finally decided. The men were adjudged to have been in their fifties when they died, the woman in her seventies.

In addition to the human remains, Correnti’s collaborator Luigi Cardini identified bones that once galumphed around as hogs, sheep, and goats — and some that scratched around as chickens.  Perhaps a fourth of the bones extracted from the alleged authentic grave of Peter — fifty or sixty fragments altogether⁸ — came from a Roman barnyard instead of from the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Unlike the bones said to have been found inside the graffiti-covered wall, the bones actually taken from the “true tomb of the Prince of Apostles” are not venerated. Quietly, they have been stored away in some secret location. 

The mixing of sows and saints certainly creates a problem for Catholic apologists. The presence of animal bones mixed in with human bones can easily be explained by a variety of believable hypotheses if St. Peter never existed as a historical figure or if the bones have nothing to do with an actual St. Peter; it is very difficult to explain if any of the human bones discovered really are those of a historical Prince of Apostles and first pope. 

There are other problems too. Why, for example, should the remains of the most famous person in Catholic history be stashed away in a grubby hollow wall instead of being placed in a magnificent sarco-phagus inside something looking like a tomb? (According to the sixth-century Liber Pontificalis, the emperor Constantine built the basilica at the site of the “Temple of Apollo” and enclosed St. Peter’s body in a five-foot-high, cubical bronze structure.⁹) Why is there no carefully chiseled Latin inscription reading:

Amusingly, when Pope Paul VI pronounced the relics authentic back in 1968 he unwittingly highlighted this fundamental deficiency by quoting the fourth century church historian Eusebius to the effect that the tomb should have borne a label: 

It is said that Paul was beheaded by him (Nero) and Peter crucified at Rome and the monuments inscribed with the names of Peter and Paul still testify to this and are still visited in the cemeteries of the city of Rome.¹⁰ 

Despite the underwhelming appearance of the miserable structure uncovered by the Vatican excavators, Paul VI declared it to be not only the “tomb” of St. Peter but the fabled “Tropaion of Gaius” as well. 

In his Ecclesiastical History [II xxv 6-7], Eusebius tells of an ecclesiastic named Gaius who, around the year CE 200, was quarreling over who had the best holy sites with a certain Proclus. “Gaius,” Eusebius writes, “in a written dialog with Proclus, the leader of the Phrygians, says the following about the places where the sacred relics of the apostles mentioned [Peter and Paul] are deposited: ‘But I can point out the tropaia of the apostles; for if you go to the Vatican or the Ostian way, you will find the tropaia of those who founded this church.’” 

Even Catholic apologists agree that Gaius was wrong about who founded the Church of Rome, but they still grasp at his allusion to the tropaia of Peter and Paul. But what are tropaia? Monuments? Graves? Tombs? Memorials? Relics? Despite the arguments of Catholic apologists, from the context of Gaius’ argument with Proclus it is clear that tombs or graves can be ruled out as meanings of tropaia, The Red Wall structure cannot be a Tropaion of Gaius.

On Monday, 22 August 1949, the front page of The New York Times carried an article headlined “Bones of Saint Peter Found Under Altar, Vatican Believes.” The subtitle stated that the relics were “Reported to Be in Urn Guarded by Pontiff.” Written by Camille M. Cianfarra, the article announced that “The bones of Saint Peter, ‘Prince of the Apostles,’ who, according to Christian tradition, was crucified in Rome during the second half of the first century AD., are understood to have been found less than twenty feet below the pavement of St. Peter’s Basilica.” Without noting any contrast to honest, scientific, archaeological procedures, the article continued: 

Vatican archaeologists who directed the excavations have taken an oath of secrecy and are therefore forbidden to confirm or deny the discovery. However, statements made over a period of months by various persons in the Vatican are said to have supplied enough circumstantial evidence that the remains of Saint Peter have been recovered in the hypogeum, or subterranean cell, where tradition said he was buried. 

This crypt was unearthed two years ago in the course of secret excavations in the Vatican Grottoes. The bones are being preserved in an urn closely guarded by Pope Pius XII himself, in the private chapel next to his study, Vatican circles said.

Actually, the excavations had been going on in secret for more than a decade when this story went to press. Several days after Eugenio Pacelli had been elected Pius XII, in March of 1939, he ordered Msgr. Ludwig Kaas, the “Secretary and Administrator for the Fabric of Saint Peter’s” — a sort of glorified head janitor — to find a suitable place in the cellar to bury his predecessor, Pius XI. 

Why all the secrecy? Cianfarra explained: 

According to officials the reason for keeping the discovery secret is that the Pontiff, before making the announcement which, they said, will certainly be of tremendous interest for both Roman Catholics and non-Catholics, wants his archaeological experts to gather proofs so incontrovertible that no one will be able to challenge their authenticity. Accordingly, tests were said to have been made, the nature of which was not disclosed.

The pope was to wait until the end of his jubilee year, 1950, before saying anything more on the subject.  Strangely, when he did talk about the bones he backed off from the position everyone expected him to advance. Reporting on the pope’s Christmas message broadcast on 23 December 1950, The New York Times quoted the pope the next day: 

The excavations… at least inasmuch as they concern the tomb of the Apostle (explorations which have been the object of our thoughtful attention from the first months of our pontificate), and their scientific examination have been brought to a happy conclusion… Has the tomb of Saint Peter really been found? To that question the answer is beyond all doubt: Yes. The tomb of the Prince of the Apostles has been found. Such is the final conclusion after all the labor and study of these years. … 

A second question, subordinate to the first, refers to the relics of Saint Peter. Have they been found? At the side of the tomb remains of human bones have been found. However, it is impossible to prove with certainty that they belong to the body of the Apostle.

Perhaps the biggest shock one gets from these two tomes comes from the almost complete lack therein of information on the bones or the circumstances of their discovery: no information on which of the four investigators had found them, how many there were, nor what they looked like. And no mention of any terra cotta ossuary urn. There are two diagrams which show a spot labeled O for ossa (“bones”), roughly below the Muro Rosso. In the text there is the off-hand comment that “At the bottom of this [niche at the base of the Red Wall] scattered and intermingled on the ground were found some human bones which were collected with care.”¹³  

In a personal memoir by one of the excavators, the Jesuit Engelbert Kirschbaum, we are told that “A heap of human bones was found, as if expressly concealed in the earth, beneath the Red Wall, at the spot where its foundations show the triangular break. They lay in a heap, and to a depth roughly, of 30 centimeters.”¹⁴ A footnote, however, tells us that “The corresponding sketches in Esplorazioni… do not bring this out and require emendation.” No corrected diagram is presented, leaving us with nothing that even claims to show the true discovery site and situation of the Red-Wall bones. 

Concerning the space in the graffiti wall — the cavity which today contains the Plexiglass-boxed relics from Old MacPeter’s Farm — the official report notes only that “In this little box we found remains of organic material and of bones, intermingled with dirt, a strip of lead, two strands of silver thread, and a coin from the Viscounty of Limoges, datable between the 10th and 12th centuries.”¹⁵  

There is only one photograph of these bones of contention in the Explorations report. Reprinted in nearly every book written on the subject of St. Peter’s bones, it shows several human bones lying on the dirt inside a triangular crevice under the Muro Rosso. Readers of the report can only suppose that this is what the excavators saw when they first reached this spot. But the photograph was faked. A footnote in Kirschbaum’s memoir reveals that “They [the Red-Wall bones] had to be removed temporarily from this spot before they could be photographed.”¹⁶  

What kind of archaeology is this? Not only is there no minutely detailed account of the layout and disposition of the bones when they were discovered, there is instead a completely false picture of the discovery! Instead of being shown a picture of bones piled up about a foot deep — thus indicating that this was not an original burial — we see two or three bones lying on the ground in what conceivably could be an original burial. Just why is it that the bones had to be removed before they could be photographed? Only nefarious reasons come to mind as possible answers. 

Although the official report gives no useful information on the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the bones under the Red Wall, Kirschbaum, as we have seen, does mention the subject several times in his memoir The Tombs Of St Peter & St Paul¹⁷ and tries to account for the fact that the bones were found piled up, not scattered on the ground as implied by the Explorations report and the faked photograph. “It might be surmised,” he writes, “that scattered remains had at one time been collected and placed beneath the Red Wall. In that case, anatomical investigation would have showed that they belonged to different skeletons. Medical examination, however, gave the contrary verdict, i.e., that all these bones belonged to one and the same person. That person was further described as an elderly and vigorous man. The skull is missing.” 

A dead ringer for St. Peter! Especially since it was believed that Peter’s skull was in a reliquary in the Cathedral of St. John Lateran.¹⁸ (iv) But alas, poor Engelbert! As we have seen, Correnti’s anthropological study of the Red-Wall bones subsequently showed that they were the remains of at least three individuals (one of them a very old woman) and included 29 skull fragments and some livestock parts. Moreover, Kirschbaum’s comment that the bones had been found in a small heap — implying that they had been piled up by someone — is at variance with the original report, of which he was a co-author. It had claimed that the bones were found “scattered and intermingled on the ground.” Both accounts contradict the report in The New York Times indicating that the bones had been in a terra cotta urn in the middle of a hypogeum. Worse yet, all three seem to contradict the pope’s comment that the original set of bones was found “at the side of the tomb”! 

What difference does it make whether the bones were scattered or piled up when found, exposed or enclosed in an urn or wall? A great deal, as it turns out. 

When Constantine built the old St. Peter’s Basilica over the surface of a magnificent pagan cemetery ca. CE 320-325, numerous tombs and burials were violated in the process. As the supreme pontiff of the Roman religion, Constantine could grant official pardon for this violatio sepulchri. Even so, care was taken to minimize the degree of outrage committed. When his builders could not avoid disturbing a burial, the bones were carefully stacked within sarcophagi. But this respectful procedure for dealing with the remains of disturbed  burials existed long before the time of Constantine, and was clearly practiced at the time the so-called graffiti wall was built beside the Red-Wall shrine alleged to mark the site of St. Peter’s burial. On the north face of the so-called “Tomb of the Egyptians,” one of the many tombs discovered beneath the floor of St. Peter’s, a pre-Constantinian, chest-like masonry structure was discovered filled with human bones, obviously the remains of earlier burials reburied when the tomb was built.¹⁹  

The mixtures of bones found by the Vatican investigators — whether we consider the bones found beneath the Red Wall or in the cavity of the graffiti wall — can be explained simply as bones unavoidably or unexpectedly uncovered and collected by tomb builders.

We have already seen that the bones now venerated are those which are supposed to have been found in the cavity of the graffiti wall, not the bones reported back in 1949 to have been found in an urn at the base of the Red Wall. Why is this? If the true grave of the apostle is the cavity at the base of the Red Wall, why did Pope Paul VI ignore the bones found in it and certify instead the bones associated with the graffiti wall? In two words, the answer almost certainly is “Margherita Guarducci.” 

Margherita Guarducci was a devoutly Catholic epigrapher engaged by the Vatican in September of 1953 to study the graffiti exposed over a decade earlier – including the graffiti which covered the so-called “graffiti wall.”  She decided that many of the graffiti involved a Christian secret code, revealing not only that the spot had been frequented (probably secretly) by Christians up to the time Constantine built his basilica over it, but also that a cult of Peter had existed there. Much of her “decipherment” is fanciful and fails to recognize possible Mithraic significance in at least some of the graffiti. (Abundant archaeological finds attest the worship of Mithra as well as the Great Mother on the Vatican hill very close to the site of the present church. (v)) 

Naturally, Guarducci concluded that all these Petrine graffiti meant she was close to a site of great significance to Peter-worshipers. What else could it be but Peter’s grave, as Pius XII already had concluded? Moreover, one fragment of incised Red-Wall plaster seemed to clinch it. Written in tiny Greek capital letters – letters no taller than the capitals in the title of this article – the graffito when whole (see Fig. 2) is claimed to have read  (Petros eni, “Peter is inside”). But inside what? Were these tiny letters on a big wall all there was to mark the most important tomb in all of Christendom? If they were inscribed on the Red Wall, wouldn’t it imply Peter was on the other side of the Red Wall rather than below it? If Peter really was under the Red Wall as originally supposed, shouldn’t the graffito have been the Greek equivalent of “Peter is below” instead of “Peter is inside”? 

The plaster fragment had been discovered by Antonio Ferrua, one of the four original excavators. Although it had not been seen when the marbled cavity of the graffiti wall was originally studied, it suddenly appeared one day late in December of 1950 when, for no special reason, Ferrua had shone a light into the supposedly empty chamber. He concluded that it had become dislodged from a part of the Muro Rosso onto which the graffiti wall abuts and had fallen into the cavity.²⁰ According to Walsh, Ferrua came to treat the piece of plaster as his own property, withholding it from study by other scholars. Worse yet, he included an incorrect sketch of it in an article written for La Civiltà Cattolica, and did not relinquish the piece to the Vatican until 1957.²¹ 

As is often the case with evidence adduced to support religious claims, one has to use a bit of imagination and “reconstruction” to get from what is real to what is claimed. In point of fact, not all of the letters in the supposed message  are to be found on the surviving bit of plaster, and not all of what can be seen upon the piece necessarily fits easily into the reconstruction. If the piece of plaster simply fell off the Red Wall, wouldn’t it be logical to examine the Red Wall carefully to see if the missing letters are still there in situ? No one reports having done this, or even suggests that it would be desirable to do so. The closest thing to recognition of the problem is found in Guarducci’s official report of her study of the graffiti.²² “The detachment from the wall,” she writes, “unfortunately had the consequence of altering the margins of the fragment so that it is no longer possible to restore it to its exact position on the face of the Muro Rosso.”  

How handy! If the graffito were in fact Mithraic or of some other pagan nature, we will never be able to know. All we have left is a tiny fragment which arguably fits into a sentence meaning “Peter is inside,” and we have no way of knowing if the fragment had been altered while in the possession of Antonio Ferrua.

With so many graffiti supposedly indicating the presence of Peter, Margherita Guarducci was puzzled that almost nothing was found inside the cavity of the graffiti wall. It was 1953. More than ten years had gone by since the excavations had been completed and she just happened to be in the part of the church known as the Confessione, standing before the graffiti wall with Giovanni Segoni, one of the Vatican workmen. As John Evangelist Walsh tells it,²³ she recalled that Segoni had taken part in the work of excavation and so she asked him if he remembered anything having been in the wall cavity. To this not only did he answer yes, he confessed that he himself had taken a bunch of bones out of the marbled space, put them into a wooden box, and stored them away. He then led her to a room filled with dozens of boxes holding “bones and other things turned up in the early digging” – none of these remains being known to the four excavators who authored the official Vatican report! Obtaining a particular box, he handed Guarducci the remains of an identifying attached small card which is alleged to have said simply: “ossa – urna – graf,” i.e., “bones – urn – graf[fiti wall].” 

Why had a common workman done such a thing? A monsignor had made him do it. 

The monsignor had been none other than Msgr. Ludwig Kaas, nominal head of the excavation project and author of the glowing preface for the Explorations report. It was the same monsignor who told of the “methodical exploration” conducted “with the strictest scientific principles,” of solving “scientific and technical problems with the most rigorous method and absolute objectivity.” It was the same Msgr. Kaas who assured readers of the official report concerning “scientific scruples” and wrote of “illustrating with sober objectivity and documented completeness the discoveries and ascertained facts of the last decade, determined to clear the path of the prejudices of now-outworn polemic, the path on which we seek the truth and nothing but the truth,” concluding with a reference to the “very serious work carried out with objective criteria, sustained by rigorously scientific arguments.”²⁴  

Encountering effusions such as these, one naturally is led to say, “Methinks he doth protest too much!” — and rightfully so in the case at hand. For Kaas is charged with having sabotaged much of the excavation proceedings and having made any pretense of “scientific objectivity” a laughing matter. If any part of the charges be true, the entire matter of St. Peter’s grave and bones need be taken no more seriously than a Three Stooges film. 

The Reader’s Digest editor John Walsh indicates that very early in the proceedings a rift had developed between the four excavators and Msgr. Kaas – who “knew little or nothing of archaeological technique.” Soon nearly all contact between Kaas and the team had ceased. Walsh elaborates: 

It was Kaas’ practice late each evening, after everyone had departed and the excavations lay quiet, …to tour the whole area accompanied by one of the foremen of the Sampietrini, Giovanni Segoni. Almost never present during the day’s work, on these daily tours Kaas would inspect every detail of the most recent digging and dismantling. As the work beneath the body of the basilica brought to light stray parts of skeletons, he had made it his personal duty to see that no human bones should, in the confusion of cleaning up, become mixed with the mounds of dirt and debris and be accidentally thrown out. Whenever bones were found, including an occasional skull, he had them placed in special boxes and stored away for reburial. The other four knew of Kaas’ inspection routine and grudgingly accepted it, though they were seldom informed of its daily results.²⁵ 

One evening early in 1942, a day or so after the team had first exposed the graffiti wall and peered briefly into the man-made cavity, intending to return later for a closer look, Kaas had come to the area on his rounds, along with the foreman. Segoni… inspected the cavity with a light. When he reported what appeared to be a number of bones mixed with some debris, Kaas unhesitatingly told him to remove them for safekeeping.… Besides lumps of mortar and brick which had fallen down from the wall-fill above, there were many human bones, all bleached to a stark whiteness. Reverently, Kaas placed them one by one in a box…

Because she believed the bones produced by Segoni to have been associated with the graffiti wall, and because she believed its graffiti plus the Petros eni fragment of the Red Wall proved that the grave complex was none other than the “Tropaion of Gaius,” Margherita Guarducci persuaded Pope Paul VI to allow the osteological studies we have already discussed. Ultimately, she persuaded him that the bones in the box taken from the storeroom were those of the legendary first pope himself. But is there any reason we should believe it?

Can we be certain that the bones in the wooden box really were once inside the graffiti wall? Can we be certain that whatever bones were in the graffiti wall were once in the cavity beneath the Red Wall? Can we be certain that the Red-Wall structure really was the “Tropaion of Gaius”? And even if it is, is there any reason to suppose Gaius had reliable knowledge? Is there the slightest reason to suppose that any of the non-barnyard bones found near the monument belong to Peter?

According to Walsh,²⁶ Segoni filed an affidavit (now in the Vatican archives) on 7 January 1965 which noted, among other things, that the bones were all stark white. But apart from the mouse bones, none of the bones examined by Luigi Cardini²⁷ (vi) were white. Many were quite dark, yellowish or brown, due largely to adhering soil. Moreover, the note attached to the bone box indicates the bones had been in an urn – urna – just as reported by The New York Times back in 1949. That would seem to rule out the graffiti wall, which no one has reported to have contained an urn.(vii) Was Segoni lying about the color of the bones or about which bones had been in the wall? Of course, he might just have been confused – considering how many bones he had helped to hide.

As to whether or not the bones in question had once been in the ground beneath the Muro Rosso, studies of the soil associated with the bones in the box produced by Segoni indicate they never resided in the “true tomb of Peter.” Thermal analysis curves published by Lauro and Negretti²⁸ rule out the Red-Wall site, and these authors themselves relate the bone-box soil to a different grave.

Did Gaius know where Peter’s tomb really was? We must realize we are dealing with a second-hand report given by the notorious Eusebius of Caesarea – a not especially trustworthy source. Moreover, the Latin version of Eusebius’ version of what Gaius had written a century before him places the Tropaion of Peter at a different place than does the Greek version! The Greek version has it on the Vatican hill itself; the Latin places it on a public road leading to the Vatican.²⁹ Reflecting on the fact that Eusebius knew of the newly-built St. Peter’s Basilica when he retailed the polemic of Gaius, it is impossible to believe he would not have mentioned the incorporation of the Tropaion into the basilica if that had in fact occurred. We can only conclude that whatever the mysterious Tropaion might have been, it is not to be found under the high altar of St. Peter’s.

While we can be sure that none of the bone collections discovered under the Vatican have anything to do with any historical St. Peter, we still need to explain the fact that Constantine seems to have been convinced that Peter’s grave was indeed located near what became the focal point of the church he erected. The project required not only the desecration of many pagan tombs, but the cutting away of a large part of the Vatican hillside and the infilling of a large platform on the slope below. It would have been much easier and cheaper to locate the church elsewhere in the neighborhood. Clearly, some tradition relatable to St. Peter must have led to this extravagance. There is no good reason to suppose, however, that the “St. Peter” of this tradition was the same as the St. Peter of Catholic tradition.

The Vatican hill in ancient times was a place where many deities were worshipped – including some I believe contributed much to the “biographies” of St. Peter, the Virgin Mary, and Jesus. Numerous altars to Cybele (the Great Mother or Magna Mater and prototype of Mary) have been found very close to St. Peter’s Cathedral, and in 1949 a pagan altar was dug up in the Piazza San Pietro – just several yards north of the statue of Saint Pete himself! The altar is inscribed with the names not only of the Great Mother, but of Mithra and her son Attis as well.³⁰ Attis, we may remember, was a dying and resurrecting god who bore the title of Papa (“Father”), just as did the Mithraic pontiff and the pope today. Mithra, the dying and resurrecting god born of a virgin on 25 December, not only bore the epithet Peter (“Rock”), but was often represented as carrying the key to a gate of heaven. A key was just as much a Mithraic symbol as a symbol of St. Peter – and Mithra had it earlier!

Very close to the Vatican cult complex is the Janiculum hill where, according to the testimony of the apocryphal Acts of Peter and Paul, Peter was crucified upside-down. Here too in ancient times the oldest of Italian gods, Janus, was worshipped. (By the first century, Janus had largely fused with Mithra – and with St. Peter as well.) Interestingly, the Feast of St. Peter is celebrated on 18 January, the date on which the sun enters the sign of Aquarius – an alias of Janus and the beginning of the Mithraic zodiac. Janus too was a fisherman, since Pisces follows Aquarius. He is the oldest god said to have held the keys to the gates of heaven.

Given just this sampling of information on the religious significance of the Vatican hill and its environs, can we be surprised that someone was able to convince Constantine that St. Peter was to be found there? For at least a century before Constantine, “tour guides” were taking advantage of Christian credulity by “pointing out” (to use a phrase of the second-century churchman Origen) the sacred sites where every miracle in the Bible supposedly took place. It can hardly be doubted that Constantine’s mother St. Helena (a former barmaid who gave up entertaining the troops when she became attached to Constantius, the future Caesar) was duped by such con artists when she “discovered” the site in Bethlehem where Jesus was born and the place on the Mount of Olives whence he was yanked up to heaven. We can only suppose the fellow who led her to the “true cross” on which Jesus was crucified was richly rewarded by the gullible empress. Although we have no documentary evidence to indicate that St. Helena was involved in the siting of her murderous son’s Vatican basilica, it is altogether possible. But if it was not she who led Constantine to the building site, certain it is that there was no shortage of entrepreneurs who, when asked about a man who had borne the keys of heaven, could have “pointed out” the same or an equally suitable spot.

When Pope Pius XII told his Christmas radio audience that the tomb of St. Peter had been found, he was wrong. When Pope Paul VI announced in June of 1968 that the bones of the apostle had been identified, he too was wrong. An aura of chicanery amplified by incompetence surrounds these modern relics no less than it enfolds all the other relics of Catholic Christianity. We have just as much reason to believe that Peter’s eleventh-century skull at the Lateran is genuine, or that all the teeth claimed to have come from John the Baptist are genuine – teeth numerous enough to fit out dentures for a crocodile. And that, of course, is no reason at all.  

Footnotes: 

(i) Luigi Cardini, who identified the numerous pig bones taken from the alleged grave of Peter, noted that the combination of species was typical of “those which one normally finds in any rural area close to farm houses and barns,” adding that one “is induced to think that this locality was especially devoted to the rearing of hogs.” The perfect place to build the most famous church in Christendom!  

(ii) In 1968, Paul VI described this set of bones as “once living members of Christ, temples of the Holy Spirit, destined to glorious resurrection.”  

(iii) Back in 1910, a German scholar by the name of Arthur Drews in a book titled Die Petruslegende argued that St. Peter was a mythical character, partly evolved from the Roman god Janus — famous for his two-faced nature. Perhaps Drews was too conservative, having Peter be two-faced when in fact the relics show him to have been two-headed! (My annotated English translation of this book is being brought out by American Atheist Press under the title The Legend Of Saint Peter.)  

(iv) Pope Paul also authorized Correnti to examine the Lateran relic. In secret, Correnti studied the fragments and expressed the opinion that “no conflict existed between the Lateran skull and the graffiti wall bones.” Not surprisingly, no official or scientific report has ever been published, nor has any explanation been provided for the existence of two skulls of St. Peter.  

(v) We know that Mithra was worshipped within yards of the Vatican high altar in ancient times, and Mithraic graffiti could be expected. Mithra, who also bore the epithet of Rock  (Petros in Greek), was a keeper of the keys to the gates of heaven, and the many key-shaped graffiti found by Guarducci could apply to Mithra as well as St. Peter. Moreover, the supposed Chi-Rho crosses interpreted as proof-positive of Christian presence at the site could be Mithraic as well. The symbol was used as an abbreviation for Chronos as well as for Christos. Chronos, the god of time, was a popular embodiment of Mithra.  

(vi) Photographs in the same book clearly show the contrast between the white mouse bones and the dark animal and human bones. 

(vii) The Times reported that Vatican staff had found bones in a terra cotta urn, not a marble-lined cavity. Was the story of the urn made up by some Vatican official, or is an important part of the evidence still being hidden?  

¹ "Text of Announcement by Pope Paul VI Concerning the Relics," The New York Times, 27 June 1968.  

² Luigi Cardinio "Risultato Dell'esame osteologico dei resti scheletrici di animali," in: Le Reqliquie di Pietro Sotto La Confossione della Basilica Vaticana, by Margherita Guarducci, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1965, pp. 161-168.  

³ Luigi Cardini, ibid., p. 168.  

⁴ New York Times, op. cit.  

⁵ Camille M. Cianfarra, The New York Times, 22 August 1949, p. 1.  

⁶ John Evangelist Walsh, The Bones of Sait Peter, Collins Fount Paperbacks, Bungay, Suffolk, 1982, p. 59.  

⁷ Venerando Correnti, "Relazione dello studio compiuto su tre gruppi di resti scheletrici umani gia rinvenuti sotto la Confessione della basilica vaticana," in Le Reliquie di Pietro Sotto La Confessione della Basilica Vaticana, by Margherita Guarducci, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Rome, 1965, pp. 83-160.  

⁸ Walsh, Op. cit., p. 103.  

⁹ Engelbert Kirschbaum, The Tombs of St Peter & St Paul, translated by John Murray, St. Martin's Press, N.Y., 1959, pp. 51, 219 n. 3.  

¹⁰ "Text of Announcement by Pope Paul VI Concerting the Relics," The New York Times, June 27, 1968. [Emphasis mine]  

¹¹ Hugo Gressmann, Eusebius Werke, Dritter Bank, Zweiter Teil, Die Theophanie. Die Griechischen Bruchstucke und Ubersetzung der Syrischen Uberlieferung, 2nd Ed. by Adolf Laminski, Die Griechischen Christlichen Schrifsteller Der ersten Jahrhunderte, Akademie Verlag, Berlin, 1992, p. 175.  

¹² B.M. Apollonj Ghetti, A. Ferrua, E. Josi, and E. Kirschbaum, Esplorazioni Sotta La Confessione Di San Pietro In Vaticano Eseguite Negli Anni 1940-1949, Two Volumes, Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, Citta del Vaticano, 1951.  

¹³ Esplorazioni, Vol I, p. 120.  

¹⁴ Kirschbaum, op. cit., pp. 91, 223.  

¹⁵ Esplorazioni, Vol I, p. 162.  

¹⁶ Kirschbaum, op. cit., pp. 91, 223.  

¹⁷ Kirschbaum, op. cit., pp. 195f.  

¹⁸ Walsh, op. cit., p. 166.  

¹⁹ Jocelyn Toynbee and John Ward Perkins, The Shrine of St. Peter and the Vatican Excavations, Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1956, p. 53.  

²⁰ Walsh, op. cit., p. 75.  

²¹ Walsh, op. cit., p. 160.  

²² Margherita Guarducci, I Graffiti Sotto La Confessione Di San Pietro In Vaticano, Vol. II, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Citta del Vaticano, 1958, p. 396.  

²³ Walsh, op. cit., pp. 87ff.  

²⁴ Esplorazioni, Vol. I, pp. VII-XI.  

²⁵ Walsh, op. cit., pp. 78ff.  

²⁶ Walsh, op. cit., pp. 168-169.  

²⁷ Cardini, op. cit., p. 168.  

²⁸ Carlo Lauro and Gian Caro Negretti, "Risultato dell'analisi petragrafica dei campioni di terra," in: Le Reliquie di Pietro Sotto la Confessione della Basilica Vaticana, by Margherita Guarducci, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1965, pp. 169-179.  

²⁹ Daniel Wm. O'Conner, Peter in Rome: The literary, Liturgical, and Archaeological Evidence, Columbia University Press, New Yor, 1969, pp. 95-96.  

³⁰ Esplorazioni, Vol. I, p. 15.  

Formerly  a professor of biology and geology, Frank R. Zindler is now a science writer. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the New York Academy of Science, the Society of Biblical Literature, and the American Schools of Oriental Research. he is the Editor of American Atheist.

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