"Come, follow me! "said Christ to the young man who wants to join him in the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. Do we have to wait until we're perfect? No: among the first to follow in Jesus' footsteps were Peter and Paul. The first is an angry, bloodthirsty fisherman. The other did not know Christ, but he persecuted his disciples. What curious characters! Yet Jesus entrusts his magisterium to this same Peter; he gives him the keys. As for Paul, animated by the zeal of the converted, he creates and strengthens new communities through his visits and letters. These men died in the name of their faith, with courage, as martyrs, in Rome, during Nero's persecutions, around 64. Peter is buried on the Mons Vaticanus, where the first Christians soon go on pilgrimage to the tomb of the apostles, ad limina apostolorum. A basilica is erected there, then another, for the glory of God. Over the centuries, it is the heart of the Catholic people that has never ceased to beat in the Vatican, within the confines of what is the smallest state in the world, whose current borders were set in 1929. If the heart is here, the body is everywhere, and it is called the Church, made up of more than a billion human beings. However, the message of the Holy See is not only addressed to these people, and in a humanistic concern, the Pope proposes paths of reflection for everyone in a changing world. The Vatican is also visited for its museums, which were the first in the world to be created. It admires what man can achieve with his creative genius, using gifts that come from elsewhere and that are manifested in the mastery of the arts. If the message of the Apostolic See is addressed urbi et orbi, to the city and to the world, then it is also from these same places that everyone comes to the Vatican.
Yann Le RAZER
