(ZENIT News / Vatican City, 25.10.2024).- “Saint Peter’s Chair,” the wooden throne that symbolizes Peter’s primacy, will remain exposed to the public in Saint Peter’s Basilica. The relic will be exposed from the end of the Mass on Sunday, October 27, and will be taken to the Altar of the Confession of the Vatican Basilica, at the conclusion of the Synod of Bishops. It will be the first time with the baldachin uncovered after its restoration.
The “Cathedra Sancti Petri Apostoli” has been considered for centuries the Episcopal Seat of Peter: a golden wooden throne with ivory plates that represent the Labors of Hercules and six constellations. The venerated relic was removed from Bernini’s monumental golden bronze “reliquary,” to be able to restore the Basilica’s apse, in the framework of the restoration works undertaken by the Fabric of Saint Peter, in view of next year’s Jubilee. It will be subjected to a series of thorough diagnostic and cognitive researches, carried out in collaboration and synergy with the Office of Scientific Research Applied to Cultural Assets of the Vatican Museums. In fact, it was necessary to remove the precious wooden Chair to assess its state of conservation fifty years after its last extraction (1969-1974).
Many believe that the wooden Chair is the throne of the Emperor Charles the Bald, King of the Franks, who was crowned in the old Saint Peter’s Basilica on December 25, 875 by Pope John VIII However, it cannot be discarded that this 9th century imperial seat subsequently contained the panel representing the Labors of Hercules, perhaps in reference to a previous and older papal seat.
This past October 2, before the opening Mass of the 16th General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, Pope Francis was able to see close-up the old and venerated Chair of Saint Peter — with Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, Archpriest of the Papal Basilica –, in the Ottoboni Sacristy of Saint Peter’s Basilica. The Holy Father then decided that it should be exposed for the veneration of the faithful at the conclusion of the Synod of Bishops.
It will be possible to venerate and admire the wooden Chair in the Altar of the Confession until this coming December 8, Feast of the Immaculate Conception. “The Basilica wishes to celebrate this old relic as the Chair of Love – explained Cardinal Gambetti – The Good Shepherd, in fact, Who gives His life for His sheep, knows them one by one and knows them by their name, asks Peter: ‘Do you love Me more than these?’ And it is only in the strength of that love, the first and most important of the Commandments, that Jesus invests him with the task to feed His sheep, making him His Vicar on earth and the first of the Apostles. The old Chair of Peter is the Chair of Love because it shows us how only from interchangeable love can a true Christian community be born, certainly synodal.” “Let’s go back to the atmosphere that was breathed in the first Christian community,” adds Cardinal Gambetti. The “Chair of Peter speaks to us of a meeting, gathered in assembly, of a Church united around her Pastor, where each one is called to follow Jesus personally, but on a path that is never individualistic, but always shared and illumined by brethren.” “The Chair teaches us that life is not power, but service,” added Father Enzo Fortunato, Director of Communications of Saint Peter’s Basilica.
