Afterword

The great eighteenth-century poet Thomas Gray, musing on a different graveyard in his “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” wrote:

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,

Awaits alike the inevitable hour.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.224

Certainly this has proven true in the lives of the Three Amigos.

Aside from the beautiful bell tower dedicated to Walter Carroll by George Strake and others in his hometown of Pittsburgh, and his portrait hanging alongside Strake’s in the parish church of St. Philip Neri in Garbatella, there are strangely no memorials, biographies, or other physical remembrances of Walter Carroll, the brave priest who saved thousands of refugees and may well have saved Rome itself from destruction by the Germans and the Allies. In a certain sense, the entire city of Rome today is Carroll’s memorial.

Joseph McGeough later served as the Vatican’s point man in places as far removed as warring Northern Ireland and segregated South Africa. Yet after his death in 1970, he also strangely seems to have been forgotten.

Montini — Blessed Pope Paul VI — is buried in a simple grave in the earth very near where he believed and proclaimed Peter to have been buried. Among his final words were, “The Tomb: I would like it to be in the real earth, with a humble sign to indicate the place and to invite Christian piety. No monument for me.”225

The great Conroe Oil Field, after fifty-five million years in existence and almost ninety years of production, is largely spent. The rigs are gone and the wells mostly silent. Production is a fraction of what it was in the 1940s when it fueled the Allies. According to entries on the internet, teens surreptitiously jump a fence to swim in Crater Lake near Conroe, no doubt ignorant that it was once the scene of a massive 1933 explosion. Most are probably ignorant also of the name George Strake. In conformity with his wishes, little was named after George Strake during his life, nor did he seek public acclaim. No Rockefeller Center for George Strake. He would be very glad to know he currently has no entry on Wikipedia. Aside from a monument or two (including the simple one in the parish church in far-off Garbatella), a distinguished high school, and buildings named for him after his death, his great memorials are his family and his deeds.

His children and grandchildren are self-made, each successful in their own way. His namesake grandson once remarked that when he was young, he wished the great fortune (once among the largest in the world) had not been given away. Now older, he realizes the great name and legacy of generosity was a better inheritance. Similarly, a generation later, Strake’s great-grandson has asked why the fortune was given away. Hopefully this book answers that question — because George Strake believed in and possessed nobility of character, beyond money, fame, or class. He had a generosity so great that he could not hide it, even with his demands of anonymity, and a faith that did move mountains. From the Pius XII Center at St. Louis University, which now contains copies of materials from the ancient Vatican archives to insure against their loss, to the tens of thousands of campers who have enjoyed his beloved Glen Eyrie and Eagle Lake, his legacy proves that we’re meant to use our resources for the good of others. Beyond question, however, his most important and enduring legacy lies in the dark Necropolis below the Vatican.

Margherita Guarducci rests in a cemetery in Rome, only a few yards from the grave of Dr. Venerando Correnti, who authenticated her find.226 She is regarded as one of the greatest archeologists of the twentieth century. The Christian inscriptions she decoded are perhaps of even greater significance than the discovery of Peter’s bones. If once, like Peter, she was lost, now she has been found. In May 2015, the citizens of Rome posthumously honored her by naming a street after her — the “Via Margherita Guarducci” — and testimonials to her recently appeared in various international newspapers.²²⁷ Recently, the Vatican website has also begun to acknowledge her contribution.

Ferrua is buried in the Necropolis only a few yards from where Pope Francis placed the full weight of the Catholic Church behind Guarducci’s find. There is no street named for Ferrua, who no doubt rested a bit unquietly during Pope Francis’s nearby ceremony in 2013. On Ferrua, one of the few surviving friends of Guarducci remarked: “I don’t believe in the old legend of Peter as gatekeeper of Heaven, where I know Margherita is. But if it is so, I wonder how Peter greeted Ferrua.”

The Necropolis is no longer the dark, dusty, debris-filled ruin encountered by the excavators and later by Guarducci. The great flood of 1949 has never reoccurred, and the “curse” of the excavation proved illusory. Instead, the Necropolis has been restored and gentrified — even air-conditioned — and opened to visitors. Getting a tour of the Necropolis remains tricky, and visitors must apply many months in advance to the Vatican for tickets. The Necropolis’ permanent occupants would no doubt be happy to know that after their sleep of nearly two millennia, the newly opened Vatican tour, known as the Scavi Tour, is widely regarded today as “one of Rome’s hottest tickets.”228

Walking up the ancient hill now deep underground, visitors to the Scavi pass simple Christian graves, finally coming to the strange trophy Gaius wrote of so long ago, flanked by the Red Wall and the Graffiti Wall, with Peter’s bones now on display in the niche of the Graffiti Wall. The guides seldom explain the strange scratches on the Graffiti Wall.

As to Peter, an ancient Christian story (later the subject of books and movies) relates that Peter fled Rome to escape Nero’s persecution. On his way out of Rome along the Appian Way, he met Christ walking back toward the city. Peter asked the Lord the famous question: “Quo vadis?” (Where are you going?) Jesus is said to have answered, “I am going to Rome to be crucified again.” Ashamed that Christ was taking his place, Peter turned back to Rome to meet his fate. An ancient church that may date back to the eighth century, called Domine Quo Vadis, marks the site near the Appian Way where this supposedly occurred.

There is no proof of this story, but there is abundant evidence — both early documentary evidence and compelling physical evidence — that Peter was captured and executed by Nero in Rome. This includes the early documentary references to his Roman grave, the early inscriptions around it, the Trophy of Gaius itself and, very compellingly, the epigrams and bones discovered by Guarducci. His body (with his feet cut off after being crucified upside down) was discarded on Vatican Hill where his followers, in great danger, buried him and began to pray at his grave in secret, erecting a trophy over it and writing coded prayers around it.229 Peter’s bones were later moved, either during the great persecutions of Christians by Valerius and Diocletian (after 250 and before the completion of the first St. Peter’s in 337) or perhaps, as Guarducci believed, during the construction of Constantine’s basilica.²³⁰

The lengthy excavation project is complete. The great puzzle has been solved. Peter’s earthly remains have been returned after seventy-five years to the Graffiti Wall. Where Peter’s spirit is and whether all paths of glory really do end at the grave remains, of course, a matter of faith.

Quo vadis?