Vatican Pulls a Boner with St. Peter’s Alleged Remains
Posted by mattusmaximus on November 29, 2013
In light of the upcoming Holiday Season, I wanted to do a quick post regarding an interesting bit of news out of the Vatican recently; apparently, the Vatican is putting the supposed bones of St. Peter on public display for the very first time. However, these may not be the bones true-believers are looking for…
It would be a real boner if the remains turned out to not be those of Saint Peter, wouldn’t it?(image source)
St. Peter’s Bones: Vatican ‘Verifies’ Remains Despite Archaeological Skepticism
As far as St. Peter’s bones go, many Catholic’s will no doubt be planning a pilgrimage to the Holy See, to view the bones purported to belong to St. Peter. The remains were revealed Sunday at St. Peter’s square, and the revelation was performed at St. Peter’s Square at the conclusion of the Catholic church’s “Year of Faith.”
This also happens to the first time St. Peter’s bones have ever been put on display since being discovered in 1939. But there is no DNA sample with which to make a comparison and no way of proving who the skeletal remains actually belong to. But the Vatican is declaring their “verification” regardless.
Pilgrims 8.5 million strong have journeyed to see the Vatican’s relics collection over the last year, but many are questioning whether or not the bones really belong to St. Peter. Peter was believed to have been martyred in Rome in 64 C.E. by being crucified upside down, and then buried in the city. Pope Paul VI said of St. Peter’s bones:
“[They had been identified] in a manner which we believe convincing.”
… Despite the lack of verification, and the fact that archeologists have disputed that they actually found St. Peter’s bones, the Vatican has found the identification “convincing” and has officially declared the bones to belong to St. Peter.
Pardon me if I’m just a bit skeptical of these claims, especially since there has been no independent verification that the remains are indeed those of St. Peter. Sadly, the history of the Catholic Church is full of examples of pious frauds (such as the much-lauded Shroud of Turin) passed off on the faithful as the real thing when, at best, their authenticity is highly dubious.
Of course, in a time when the Church is struggling to keep asses in pews and money coming into the coffers, I suppose they’ll grab onto anything – no matter how questionable or tenuous – that they can.
The Skeptical Teacher 
Stan Puryear said
When I saw the bones in the Scavi a few years ago, the tour guide told us that carbon and chemical analysis had revealed that the bones were 2000 years old and belonged to a male who had grown up in the Galilee region. Beyond that, nothing could be determined, as there are no verifiable descendants of Peter. I was disappointed that journalists did not do a better job of investigating this. The Shroud of Turin, on the other hand, was disproved via carbon dating (though no one can quite determine how the image was transferred to the cloth), although there are folks who have tried to explain away the discrepancies.