5 Ways the 2025 Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul Speaks to US Catholics

National Catholic Register, 29 June 2025

A new Pope, a revived tradition, and nine American archbishops in Rome mark this year’s solemnity.

The Solemnity of St. Peter and St. Paul — the princes of the apostles and the patrons of the city of Rome — will take on a special character this year, especially for American Catholics.

The feast falls on Sunday, so while it is always observed with a papal Mass in Rome, every parish will also keep the feast, as it outranks a Sunday in Ordinary Time. In fact, it caps off four consecutive Sunday “solemnities” this June: Pentecost, Most Holy Trinity, Corpus Christi and Peter and Paul.

Here are five things to note about the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul in 2025.

A New Pope

It will be Pope Leo XIV’s first opportunity to preach on the patronal feast of his city and on the figure of Peter, which animates the iconography of St. Peter’s Basilica. What will he emphasize? Already this year, he has had several occasions to hear John 21 — “Simon, do you love me?” — proclaimed, at the funeral of Pope Francis, at Sunday Mass before the conclave, at his inaugural Mass as Pope.

The Gospel passage for Peter and Paul is Matthew 16: “You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church.” Leo XIV began his first homily the day after his election by quoting Peter’s confession of faith from the same passage: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

While Matthew 16 is the principal text for the Petrine office, different popes choose to emphasize different biblical verses. Benedict XVI tended toward John 21, while St. John Paul the Great often cast his office in light of Luke 22:32, where Jesus speaks of Peter’s denials: “I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.”

Biblical Inscriptions

Given the Gospel reading for the feast, pilgrims in St. Peter’s will be especially attentive to the biblical verse inscribed with giant letters inside the base of the cupola, Matthew 16:18 — “Tu es Petrus …” (“You are Peter …”).

What is less noticed is that along the vast nave and transepts of St. Peter’s are the other verses associated with the Petrine office — John 21 and Luke 22. The basilica is encircled, as it were, by the biblical mission given to Peter.

Americans may know that there is a St. Peter’s parish near Capitol Hill in Washington. Along the nave is inscribed “Tu es Petrus …” in Latin. But in the sanctuary, it prominently has the words of Peter to Jesus, his confession of faith: “Tu es Christus Filius Dei Vivi” (“You are the Christ, Son of the living God”).

Somehow, the Washington option seems better in following the biblical order — first the confession of Christ as Son of God, then the constitution of Peter as the rock upon which the Church will be built.

At St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, there is a ready explanation for its design choice: The cupola is directly above the tomb of Peter itself. The basilica is, quite literally, built upon the rock of Peter.

Some years ago, a memoir from the late Gregory Baum, an influential but heterodox Canadian theologian, recalled a conversation he had with a young Father Joseph Ratzinger at Vatican II. They were looking up at the cupola. Baum remembers Ratzinger saying that to be complete, it should also include the later verses of Matthew 16: “Vade retro Satana” (“Get behind me, Satan”).

I don’t know if Ratzinger said that, but there is truth to it. The primacy of Peter is willed by Christ, but he remains very much an “earthen vessel,” as St. Paul himself expressed the human weakness of apostolic instruments.

A New Tradition

John Paul started a new “tradition” on Peter and Paul’s feast in 1983, the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of the Redemption. He would bless the pallia that new metropolitan archbishops wear and place it upon their shoulders. Each year, all the new archbishops appointed since the last feast of Peter and Paul would come to Rome for the feast-day Mass and have the pallium imposed upon them by the Holy Father.

The pallium symbolizes the good shepherd who carries the sheep on his shoulders. It is a woolen band that archbishops wear over their chasubles when celebrating Mass in their own “provinces.”

For example, Cardinal Timothy Dolan would wear the pallium anywhere in the ecclesiastical province of New York, which includes all the dioceses in the state of New York. Given that there can only ever be one archbishop present in his own province, the Peter and Paul Mass is the rare occasion where pallia are worn by multiple archbishops at the same Mass.

Pope Benedict XVI kept the new tradition, but Pope Francis modified it, only blessing the pallia and then sending them home to be imposed by the local nuncio in the new archbishop’s cathedral. Pope Leo has decided to resume the tradition, which is 42 years old.

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