Apologetics
Where Is the Vatican in the Bible?
Papal History
During an ecumenical discussion with a fellow Christian, I was asked a question, which I would like to address here:
Q: Usually, Catholics point to Matthew 16:18. How do you get to the Vatican from there? For me, that’s a huge jump! Asides from this verse, what else do Catholics have to show that the Vatican is Jesus’ Church?
A: The Apostolic See hasn’t always been in the Vatican, but I can take you through how it got there. Let me start with the verse mentioned, Matthew 16:18, which many Catholics have been using to explain the primacy of St. Peter, ever since Tertullian did in c. AD 220:
[T]he Lord said to Peter, ‘On this rock I will build my Church, I have given thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven’ [and] ‘whatever thou shalt have bound or loosed on earth will be bound or loosed in heaven’. What kind of man are you, subverting and changing what was the clear intent of the Lord when He himself conferred this upon Peter? Upon you, He says, I will build my Church; and I will give to you the keys— Tertullian (c. 220). De pudicítia, 21.
Here in Matthew 16, the first pope was given the keys in Cæsarea Philippi. He was in Jerusalem, then moved to Antioch, passed through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, and finally arrived to Rome, where he stayed for 25 years (St. Jerome [AD 393] 1). There he went to the death of the cross (St. Dyonisius of Corinth [c. 175], II.25:8) like Christ had asked him to do in John 21:18–22, and he was buried in the cemetery across the street from Nero’s circus (St. Caius [c. 210], II.25:5–7), which was located on the outskirts of Rome, on a hill called Vātīcānus. This hill is still called Vaticano in Italian, and Vatican in English. The obelisk in St. Peter’s Square is a remnant of the median strip of the circus, and St. Peter’s Basilica was built there, with the altar right on top of St. Peter’s tomb (Revelation 6:9), as the archaeological excavations led by Monsignor Ludwig Kaas and Prof. Margherita Guarducci have been able to confirm (Guarducci, M. [1960], 3.).
The successors to St. Peter’s bishopric stayed in Rome. Most of them haven’t lived in Vatican Hill, but in the Lateran, where the cathedral of the bishop of Rome is; some, in Quirinal Hill. There have even been popes living outside of Rome, in places like Viterbo, Orvieto, Perugia, or Avignon. It wasn’t until 1870 when Rome was captured and annexed by the newly formed Kingdom of Italy, that the successors to the bishopric have lived within the Leonine walls in Vatican Hill, an independent territory called Vatican City since 1929; so there is nothing written about where the Apostolic See should be located — what is written in Scripture is about the office itself, and how it is passed on.
We see in Matthew 16:19, Our Lord paraphrases Isaiah 22:22, when David has twelve ministers (1 Kings 4:7)— like Our Lord has twelve disciples to sit on twelve thrones (Matthew 19:28) to rule His kingdom —, and he gives the keys of his house to Eliakim, making him and his successors the ’ăšĕr ‘al ha-bayiṯ (אֲשֶׁר עַל הַבַּיִת) —the minister in charge over the king’s household (1 Kings 18:1–5), equivalent to a prime minister, who rules the kingdom in the king’s absence—. The person who receives the keys is said to be like a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem (Isaiah 22:21), and we see that this is reflected in the title papa, which means father in Latin.
Then, when Our Lord tells the twelve apostles that they will sit on thrones to judge (Psalm 122:5) the twelve tribes of Israel (Luke 22:28–30), He immediately turns to St. Peter and asks him to strengthen the others (Luke 22:31–32); and after His resurrection, He makes him the shepherd of all His flock (John 21:17). We also see that when listing the twelve apostles in Matthew 10:2, he is listed as the first — prṓtos (πρῶτος) —, and this is not because he was called first, because the first one called was his brother St. Andrew (John 1:42), who’s successor today is Bartholomew, the 270th Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. Just as the apostolic bishopric of St. Andrew has successors, so the apostolic bishopric of St. Peter was not lost when he was martyred, because as we see in scripture, when one of the twelve apostles passes away, the bishopric is passed on to another. We see this in Acts 1:17–26 when St. Peter stood up among the apostles and said that, because Judas was one of the twelve his bishopric — episkopḗ (ἐπισκοπή) — should be taken by another, and so they chose St. Matthias to take the place in the ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside, enrolling him as one of the twelve apostles. We also see in Scripture that this is done by a laying on of hands (2 Timothy 1:6) like Moses did to confer his authority to Joshua (Numbers 27:22–23, Deuteronomy 34:9), and like priests kept doing in Judaism with the semicha (סְמִיכָה), in which ordination was granted by a court of three judges including one priest (Mishnah Sanhedrin 1:3), who had to have unbroken transmission (Maimonides. [c. 1180] 4:3) tracing back to Moses (Cf. Pirkei Avot 1:1). The same requirements are maintained in the Church, where every priest is ordained by a bishop (CCC 1538), and every bishop can trace their unbroken succession through the laying on of hands all the way back to one of the apostles, and they to Christ Jesus, the new Moses.
Apostolic succession has always been important for the Apostolic Churches, because there have been times when people have claimed to have received secret knowledge, especially during the 2nd century with the rise of Gnosticism, and by measuring teachings against Tradition we can tell if someone is a false prophet or not (Luke 10:16). About this, c. AD 189, St. Irenæus writes:
It is within the power of all, in every church, who may wish to see the truth, to contemplate clearly the Tradition of the apostles manifested throughout the whole world; and we are in a position to reckon up those who were instituted bishops in the churches by the apostles, and [to demonstrate] the succession of these men to our own times; those who neither taught nor knew anything these [heretics] rave about—St. Irenæus (c. 180) Advérsus hæréses, III.3:1.
He then goes on to write:
[W]e put to confusion all those who, in whatever manner, whether by an evil self-pleasing, by vanity, or by blindness and perverse opinion, assemble in unauthorized meetings, by indicating that Tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every church agree with this Church, on account of its preeminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere, because the apostolic Tradition has been preserved continuously by those [faithful men] who exist everywhere— Ibid., III.3:2.
After Cephas was interred on Vatican Hill, his bishopric was passed on c. AD 67 to St. Linus —mentioned in 2 Timothy 4:21—, then c. AD 79 to St. Anacletus, then c. AD 88 to St. Clement of Rome —mentioned in Philippians 4:3— (Cf. St. Irenæus [c. 180], III.3:3; Eusebius [313] V.6; Catálogus liberiánus; Liber pontificális), and so through an unbroken succession, it has been passed on to Pope Francis, the 266th bishop of Rome, who happens to live in a guest house on that same hill, where the blood of the Christians flourished like a palm tree.
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