VATICAN CITY — The Vatican publicly revealed a handful of bone fragments purportedly belonging to St. Peter on Sunday, reviving the debate over whether the relics found in a shoe box truly belong to the first pope.
The nine pieces of bone sat nestled like rings in a jewel box inside a bronze display case on the side of the altar during a Mass commemorating the end of the Vatican’s year-long celebration of the Christian faith. It was the first time they had ever been exhibited in public.
The relics were discovered during excavations begun under St. Peter’s Basilica in the years after the 1939 death of Pope Pius XI. No pope has ever definitively declared the fragments to belong to the Apostle Peter, but Pope Paul VI in 1968 said fragments found in the necropolis under St. Peter’s Basilica were “identified in a way that we can consider convincing.”
