“Peter Lives in Rome Again”

In March, 2010 when Beyond These Stone Walls was a newborn blog, a post about Vatican scandal went viral. Fifteen years later it is still widely read and spread.

May 14, 2025 by Father Gordon MacRae

We have already published a post this week, though four days earlier than our usual. It has a rather blunt title, but if you missed it, you should at least indulge me. That post was, “Pope Leo XIV Is Certainly No Clone of Pope Francis.”

If you search in any search engine the term “scandal at the Vatican,” using quotes, you will immediately come across a post that technically gave birth to this blog. It was written in March, 2010 when Beyond These Stone Walls was literally nine months along. Its title is “Michelangelo and the Hand of God: Scandal at the Vatican.” I had no idea when I wrote it that “Scandal at the Vatican” would become one of the most common searches on the Internet in regard to Catholic affairs thus making my post top the charts at various points along the way.

Vatican scandal was not at all what I had in mind when I wrote that post. It tells a fascinating story about overlapping layers of art history and we will link to it again at the end of this post.

Just days ago, worldwide attention was focused on the Sistine Chapel, the site at which Pope Leo XIV was recently elected. My post from fifteen years ago was focused upon that very same place but for different reasons. I am always a bit nervous when that post surfaces widely into view again as it did during and after the recent conclave. My post was about art, and Michelangelo, and a little-known event of art history. Rome is home to some of the world's most accomplished artists and art historians. I sometimes worry about whether and how something I wrote might measure up to their scrutiny. But the post in question has been making waves on the Internet for at least the last fifteen years. No one has yet complained or challenged my artistic interpretation. I won’t repeat that entire story here. You may read it for yourself linked again at the end of this post. Despite the fact that I wrote it, it is indeed an amazing story.

Landmarks

Among the vast media sources of published commentary about the results of the recent Vatican papal conclave, some have stood out far above the rest. One of these was published in The Wall Street Journal by Canadian priest and author of some reknown, Father Raymond de Souza entitled “Catholics Welcome an American Pope” (WSJ, May 9, 2025). I found a few of its paragraphs to be especially fascinating and moving. They gave me my title for this post:

“Twenty years ago, at the election of Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop of Chicago, stood on the balcony of St. Peter’s and was caught staring off into the distance. He confessed later that he was marveling that the Church had elected yet another man to succeed Peter, while the great imperial Rome, the caput mundi, which put Peter to death on the Vatican hill, was no longer. Only ruins remained.

“In 1586, Pope Sixtus V had moved one of these ruins, a 350-ton granite obelisk, to the center of St. Peter’s Square, where it stands to this day. That obelisk could have been among the last landmarks St. Peter looked upon as he was crucified. It is the first thing a new pope sees when he lookes out over the assembled masses in the square below.

“On the top of that obelisk is a bronze cross, and place therein is a relic of the true Cross of Christ. There is in the Catholic calendar a feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. It falls on September 14 — the new Pope Leo XIV’s birthday.”

“Peter lives in Rome again.”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post, and our post about Pope Leo XIV for whom we hold high hopes which, if you saw the faces of the immense crowd in St. Peter’s Square last week, seemed to be contagious.

Please also read and share these related posts cited herein:

Michelangelo and the Hand of God: Scandal at the Vatican

Conclave: Amid the Wind and the Waves, a Successor of Peter

Pope Leo XIV is No Clone of Pope Francis

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The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”