Chapter Sixteen

The Bones Speak

In 1956, Pope Pius XII brought in Professor Venerando Correnti of Palermo University, perhaps Europe’s greatest medical anthropologist, to make a detailed clinical study of the presumed bones of Saint Peter, unearthed more than thirteen years before by Ferrua and Kirschbaum. Since their initial examination by the general practitioner in 1942, the bones had remained stored in the pope’s quarters, untouched and unquestioned. Kirschbaum had written that it was “irresistible” that these were Peter’s bones. The excavators believed and reported that they had found Peter.171

As it turned out, the original team of excavators had been very wrong. Professor Correnti soon discovered that the bones were from several individuals, not one.¹⁷² In addition, they included fragments of bones from animals. Before his death in 1958, Pius XII was informed that the bones were not Peter’s. Although we have no direct record of his reaction, Pius was surely bitterly disappointed. The Apostle Project launched under his direction twenty years before had uncovered unbelievable Roman archeological ruins and strong evidence of Peter’s presence and death in Rome — but it had not uncovered Peter’s relics, the incontrovertible evidence the pope had most hoped for. Nor did Pius apparently know the extent of Guarducci’s ongoing investigation of the inscriptions. Sadly, Pius died with his dreams for the Apostle Project still not entirely fulfilled.

The quest continued, however, even after the pope’s death. By 1960, Correnti had completed his examination of the bones that had so long been presumed to be Peter’s. He concluded that the bones were in fact those of two men too young to be Peter and an old woman.173 Kirschbaum and Ferrua were stunned and angered by the results, which they refused to believe.

Guarducci remembered the bones that had been discovered in the Graffiti Wall and saved by Kaas in 1942. The inscription “Peter is within” from that wall could very well have applied to those bones, along with the many coded references to Peter she had found on the Graffiti Wall. Perhaps the Graffiti Wall inscriptions had been the ancient Christians’ way of secretly marking the shrine and offering prayers there. If that were the case, the Graffiti Wall would in fact be an ancient tombstone. Guarducci presented the Graffiti Wall bones to Correnti for examination in 1962. They had remained in storage for twenty years, taken out only once in 1953 when Guarducci learned of their existence and briefly examined them.

Correnti’s Exam

In those twenty years in storage, it appeared a mouse had crawled into the box and died — its full skeleton remained intact.¹⁷⁴ Correnti also found small fragments of animal bones and unrelated human bone fragments, which was to be expected since (long before the Family Tombs) Vatican Hill had been used as a body dump for thousands of years before Peter’s death. But Correnti also found several remains of a single person. Extensive forensics were possible since pieces of cranium, jaw, a tooth, vertebrae, pelvis, legs, arms, and hands were all present.175 What Correnti found when examining the Graffiti Wall bones was astonishing. The bones, found very close to the inscription “Peter is here,” were determined to be those of a sixty- to seventy-year-old robust male, approximately Peter’s supposed age when he died.¹⁷⁶ Even more amazing, the bones had originally been buried in the dirt next to the Graffiti Wall under the Trophy of Gaius rather than in the wall, as evidenced by soil still adhering to them after 1,700 years. It was also determined that they had once been covered with an early purple and gold cloth whose dye was of a type only used by Imperial Romans of the first to third centuries.¹⁷⁷ Amazingly, the bones were also compatible with the remains of a person crucified upside down. The feet had been viciously cut off as the Romans were wont to do when removing a crucified corpse, because it was easier than removing nails.¹⁷⁸ The bones had been moved to the Graffiti Wall niche from the dirt under Gaius’s Trophy between 250, when the Graffiti Wall was built, and 337 when the Necropolis was sealed.

In 1963, Cardinal Montini (who as a monsignor in 1939 had dispatched Father Carroll on the mission to George Strake, and had retained Guarducci in 1952) succeeded Pope Saint John XXIII, taking the name Paul VI. Guarducci met with the new pope to share the astounding results of the examination of the Graffiti Wall bones.¹⁷⁹ The pope cautiously authorized various additional tests by Correnti. These tests proved the purple cloth adhering to the bones to be of Imperial Roman, second- or third-century origin, both by their weave and their dye. Moreover, the dirt fragments on the bones matched exactly the soil in the central grave under the Trophy of Gaius.¹⁸⁰ Additional forensic examinations validated Correnti’s conclusions.

When presented with the results, Ferrua completely denied their validity.

In late 1964, Guarducci compiled a report for publication by the Vatican. The report concluded that it was virtually certain that Peter’s bones had been found. It further deduced that Peter had originally been buried in the soil at the center of St. Peter’s, marked by Gaius’s Trophy. His remains were then covered with a purple cloth and removed (between 250 when the Graffiti Wall was built and 337 when St. Peter’s was completed) to the small, marble-lined Graffiti Wall niche marked with the encoded epigraphs.181 They had remained there until 1941, since the niche walls were totally intact. At least twenty inscriptions on the wall referred to Peter and had clearly been written there before the sealing of the Necropolis in 337. Paul VI submitted the report and all working materials to five disinterested experts — three archeologists and two specialists in Greek epigraphy. All five concluded unanimously that the report was impeccably accurate and that Guarducci had found Peter.¹⁸²

Ferrua’s reaction was that the pope was simply “deaf” to information and that Guarducci was a woman whose “faith” caused her to overstate or misinterpret results.¹⁸³