Apostle Peter

Simon, later called Peter (Greek Petros) and Cephas (Aramaic for rock), was a Galilean Jewish fisherman, the son of Jonah or John and the brother of the apostle Andrew. The Gospel of John identifies Bethsaida as the city of Andrew and Peter; the Synoptic Gospels associate him with a household in Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus healed his mother-in-law, a notice that establishes that Peter was married. First Corinthians also refers to his being accompanied by a believing wife. He worked the lake fisheries, at times in partnership with James and John, the sons of Zebedee. The Gospels describe Jesus calling Simon and Andrew from their nets to become fishers of men and giving Simon the name Peter. In Matthew he is portrayed as confessing Jesus as Messiah at Caesarea Philippi and receiving the saying that on this rock the church would be built, together with imagery of the keys of the kingdom.

Peter belonged to the innermost group of disciples, with James and John. He is present at the Transfiguration, at the raising of Jairus's daughter, and in Gethsemane. The narrative tradition presents him as ardent and fallible: he tries to walk on the water, rebukes Jesus over the coming Passion, vows fidelity at the Last Supper, and then denies Jesus three times. After the resurrection the Gospels and Acts depict a restoration and a leading role in the Jerusalem community. Acts attributes to him the Pentecost sermon, public healings, confrontation with the Sanhedrin, and the episode of the Gentile centurion Cornelius, which the book treats as a turning point in the mission beyond Israel. Paul's letter to the Galatians records a dispute at Antioch over table fellowship with Gentiles, evidence both of Peter's stature in the mid-first-century churches and of real tension over the terms of that mission. Clement of Alexandria, writing in the late second or early third century, states that Peter had children and that his wife suffered martyrdom.

Later Christian memory, already reflected in late first- and second-century writers, holds that Peter left Jerusalem, led the church at Antioch—where he is remembered as first bishop and thus as founder of that patriarchal line—and went to Rome. First Clement, written from Rome toward the end of the first century, alludes to Peter's struggles and death; Ignatius of Antioch and, more explicitly, Irenaeus and others in the later second century associate Peter and Paul with the Roman church. The apocryphal Acts of Peter and a notice of Origen preserved by Eusebius report that he was crucified in Rome under Nero and that he asked to be fixed to the cross head downward, judging himself unworthy of the same death as Jesus. No contemporary source fixes the year. The martyrdom is placed in the 60s of the first century, in the persecution that followed the fire of Rome in the reign of Nero (54–68).

From the second and third centuries a shrine on the Vatican hill was identified as his burial place; the Roman presbyter Gaius, around the turn of the third century, pointed to trophies of the apostles on the Vatican and on the Ostian Way. Constantine built a basilica over the Vatican site; the present St. Peter's Basilica stands over the same location, and twentieth-century excavations uncovered a second-century memorial and a tomb complex consistent with the ancient claim. Catholic tradition regards Peter as the first Bishop of Rome and therefore the first pope, the historical root of the claim of Petrine primacy. Eastern churches honor him as chief of the apostles and as first bishop of Antioch. He was never the object of a later formal canonization; veneration is continuous from antiquity. His principal feast, shared with Paul, is 29 June; other observances include the Chair of Saint Peter. He is invoked as patron of fishermen, net makers, shipwrights, sailors, locksmiths, cobblers, the papacy, and the city of Rome, among many other trades, places, and causes.