About our patron saints

Why St Peter AND St Paul?
Who are these saints, and why is it so common to find them so often as the joint patron saints of churches around the world.

ST PETER was one of the closest friends of Jesus during his earthly ministry. A Galilean fisherman, Jesus called him, along with his brother Andrew, to "follow me, and I will make you fish for people." (Matthew 4.19) His given name was Simon, but Jesus gave him the nickname Peter,(Petros in Greek) meaning "rock". It is sometimes hard, in the Gospels, to understand why Jesus found anything "rock-like" in Peter. He is often portrayed as impulsive, jumping out of the boat to try to walk on the water like Jesus (Matthew 14.23-33), for example, and breaking into the wonder of the Transfiguration with a clumsy offer to build shelters for Jesus, Moses and Elijah, who have appeared on the mountain (Matthew 17).
He affirms Jesus as the Messiah in Matthew 16, the first in Matthew's Gospel to do so, but then, within a few verses has tried to prevent Jesus doing the thing he has been called to do, to go to Jerusalem to die.
Most famously, at the Last Supper he promises that he will never leave Jesus (Matthew 26.33), yet, before the cock crows to announce the following morning, he has denied he even knows him (Matthew 26.75).
Following the Resurrection, however, the Gospels emphasize the meetings between Peter and Jesus. He has been forgiven and Jesus still wants to use him to lead his church. In the Acts of the Apostles Peter is foremost among the apostles and shapes the early Church's mission.

The Gospel writers often seem to use Peter to stand for all those who follow Jesus - well-intentioned perhaps, but fallible and subject to all the normal human weaknesses. It might seem surprising that he is often painted in such a dim light, but it must have been an encouragement to those who were the first hearers of the Gospels, many of whom faced persecution and death for their faith. Even this great hero, the leader of their church, had struggled and failed, but God forgave him and used him.

ST PAUL was very different from Peter. Born and raised in Tarsus, in Asia Minor, he was from a Jewish family which part of the Diaspora, Jewish communities which had formed around the Mediterranean. These communities were often much more influenced by Greek philosophical ideas than the Jews living in Judea and Galilee would have been. They are often called "Hellenistic" Jews. Paul's father had been granted Roman citizenship, probably in recognition of some service he had performed for Rome, which meant that Paul was a Roman citizen too.
Paul was, by his own admission, (Gal. 1.12) a zealous Jew, trained as a Pharisee, and he watched the growth of the followers of Jesus with great alarm. Acts tells us that he was present when Stephen was killed, and held the cloaks of those who stoned him(Acts 7.58). According to Acts,(9) however, while he was on his way to Damascus to organise the suppression of the growing Christian movement he had a blinding vision of Jesus, who asked him why he was persecuting him. Paul took this as proof that Jesus had indeed been raised from the dead by God, which would have been a sign to him that he was the Messiah. The Christians in Damascus, accepted Paul as one of them, and this zealous defender of Jewish faith became the foremost messenger to the non-Jewish communities of the ancient world. We have a number of letters from him to those early Christians in the New Testament (though not all the epistles traditionally ascribed to him were actually written by him.)

Paul, like Peter, went by two names. His Hebrew name was Saul, and he probably used this when in Jewish company. Paul was his Roman name, used in more cosmopolitan settings. In the Acts of the Apostles, where we read his story, he is called Saul until he decided to follow Jesus and Paul afterwards. This doesn't mean that he stopped using his Hebrew name at that point - Paul would simply have been more appropriate for his ministry to non-Jewish people.

The references to the few encounters Peter and Paul (Gal 1.11) had of each other don't suggest that they were bosom buddies. In fact there seem to have been persistent tensions between them. So why would these two very different apostles ("apostle" is a Greek word meaning someone who is sent out) be linked together?
The answer is that they represent the two faces of the early church. Peter was key in spreading the message of Christ among Jewish people, and Paul among Gentiles. In a sense they represent two aspects of Christian faith. On the one hand it is unchanging, resting on a long tradition of its Jewish heritage, concerned to provide a firm foundation (or deep roots, if you prefer that metaphor!) for life, on the other it is constantly changing, reaching out, finding new ways of expressing itself. Peter represents rocklike stability, Paul, the constant movement which keeps faith new and fresh in every generation.

Both Peter and Paul were traditionally believed to have been martyred in Rome, though we have no evidence for this. Acts ends with Paul in prison in Rome, but doesn't tell us what happened next. St Peter's basilica in Vatican City in Rome is believed to be built over the burial place of St Peter, while Paul's remains are believed to be in the basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls just outside the centre of Rome.