Sts. Peter and Paul the Apostles

The Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul honors together the two great apostles who are revered as the pillars of the Church and the founders, by their preaching and their martyrdom, of the Church of Rome. Though very different men, they are joined in a single feast because both crowned their apostolic labors by giving their lives for Christ in the city of Rome under the Emperor Nero, and both are celebrated as chief among the apostles.

Peter, the fisherman of Galilee whom the Lord named the rock and to whom he gave the keys of the kingdom, was the leader of the apostles and the first Bishop of Rome, and tradition holds that he was crucified, at his own request head downward, judging himself unworthy to die as his Master had. Paul, once a persecutor and then the tireless Apostle of the Gentiles, who carried the Gospel across the Roman world and poured out his teaching in his epistles, was beheaded as a Roman citizen. Their joint solemnity, the patronal feast of the city of Rome, is kept each year on 29 June.