In Via

"Upon this rock": A Primer for Encountering St. Peter's Basilica

• Verso Ministries • Season 2 • Episode 6

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What makes St. Peter’s Basilica more than just the biggest church in the world? In this Jubilee Year episode, Joan talks with Fr. Matthew Kuhn, a former tour guide, about the sacred architecture, deep symbolism, and unexpected beauty that make St. Peter’s not just visually grandiose, but full of meaning.

They discuss everything from the Pietà to the Baldacchino, and from the foot-worn statue of St. Peter to the quiet presence of Eastern saints in the West. But more than a list of facts, this episode is about how stone becomes catechesis, and how the Basilica draws you into something larger than yourself. It is a guide for seeing with more than just your eyes.

Fr. Kuhn reflects on how the basilica’s very design communicates the mystery of the Church through proportion, beauty, and balance. He explains how features like the dome, the Baldacchino, and the Chair of Peter are not just visually impressive, but spiritually intentional, drawing the pilgrim’s attention toward the Eucharist and the communion of saints.

As the Church continues in its Jubilee Year, this episode also serves as a spiritual primer for anyone making (or dreaming of making) a pilgrimage to Rome. This conversation will help you enter more deeply into what St. Peter’s was meant to be:  a witness to the living faith of the Church.

For photos, history, and more about the basilica itself, visit the official site: basilicasanpietro.va/en

Joan Watson:

Welcome to In Via, the podcast where we're navigating the pilgrimage of life. We are all "in via" on the way and we are learning a lot as we go. I'm your host, Joan Watson. Join me as we listen to stories, discover travel tips, and learn more about our Catholic faith. Along the way, we'll see that if God seeks to meet us in Jerusalem, Rome, or Santiago, He also wants to encounter you right there in your car, on your run, or in the middle of your workday. Let's visit St. Peter's Basilica. In this episode, in our special Jubilee season of In Via, we are speaking with Father Matthew Kuhn, who is a priest of the Diocese of St. Cloud, and, prior to becoming a priest, he was in seminary in Rome and led tours of St. Peter's Basilica. So, he's going to tell us all about some of the jewels in the largest church in the world.

Joan Watson:

So you are in Rome right now, which is kind of fun. You lived in Rome, you studied in Rome and now you're back in Rome, but just for a time.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

Yeah, just for a couple of months, for a sabbatical, just a visit this time.

Joan Watson:

When you knew you were going to go back for your sabbatical and you were thinking about your time in Rome, studying in Rome, what were you most looking forward to? Thinking, okay, I'm going to be back because living in Rome is different than just visiting for a week, so what were you most looking forward to?

Father Matthew Kuhn:

Gosh, there's so much beautiful art, the people, the food. There's a lot of things that I love about Rome, that I love about Italian culture as a whole, but Roman specific. It is like no other city on earth. It's one of the most walkable cities in the world, it is so friendly, yeah it just. There's so many things about Rome that if you haven't been, it's hard to describe. But once you've been so like we were just joking off air about you know, catching a draft and some of the local superstitions here and how they're so prevalent in the society and yet they're so endearing. The way that Italian people think and behave, and particularly just the spirit of hospitality in this city is so nice. So, for example, coming back to the same campus where I went to seminary, about two thirds of the employees are still here, and now I get to hear about the grandkids and catch up and it's like I never left.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

So, that real sense of universality is lived out in the people. The city may be eternal, but we are not, and those little things that do change just make worth visiting over and over again.

Joan Watson:

Yeah, I love that. I love that. Well, I want"par jump in to talk about our subject. Today we're going to talk a little bit about St. Peter's Basilica, because you were a guide there when you studied there, and so I know it's a little hard in audio and our restrictions of podcasts to give somebody a tour when they can't see what we're talking about. But I just want to give people kind of a taste, especially if they've never been there, for the importance of St. Peter's, but just the treasures that are in St. Peter's. Most people know it's the biggest church in the world, but what do I expect? What can I expect when I go there and what treasures lie behind those doors? And so could you just start us off by you know, like, if someone's never been to St Peter's, you know what's special about it. What does it look like when I walk through those doors? What can I expect? I guess.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

Okay, so the first thing to understand is it is the parish church of the world. It's not the cathedral of Rome. It's a church for the world. It always has been intended to be for the whole universal church because it's a celebration of the one apostle who kind of ties it all together, St. Peter. It's built over his grave. You heard a lot about that in the Scavi section with Father Sidlick, so I won't reiterate too much of that. So for 2,000 years, we've been going to this place to celebrate Peter; and you walk in, and you're not in a church, you're in a shopping mall of churches. That's the easiest way to think about it. So there's 25 altars on the main floor. There's 12 more chapels in the grottos below. There are dozens and dozens of funeral monuments, the graves of these famous saints that you've heard of, some you've never heard of. It's awe-inspiring but not overwhelming. Right when it was designed, the architects that built it first off, there's going to be some very familiar names that people will know just off the top of their head. They've heard of people like Raphael Sanzio, one of the people who helped design the structure itself, and Bernini, the one who designed the colonnades and the square. So, like your first impression of the place, the thing you see on all the keychains, that's Bernini everywhere. And the big dome of Michelangelo, the Michelangelo, the Ninja Turtle himself, Michelangelo Buonarroti. He designed this dome that just dominated the skyline. It still does today. It's one of the most recognizable skylines in the world.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

But when you're right up there, as huge as it is, it's not overwhelming, because it was built proportionately. So you walk into this gigantic church, and because all the art is proportional the light size on the ground level and then scaling up as it goes further away it all looks human-sized. So, from the 24-foot statues at the top to the life-size statues at your level, your eye is tricked by that. Until you look up you say ooh, those are people walking around above those letters up there and the letters are bigger than the people. So those are eight foot tall letters. So that connection of the awe-inspiring, the transcendent and the human, it's embodied in this basilica.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

And that was one of those Renaissance artistic choices that was unlike everything that had come before. It was unlike the Gothic. They weren't trying to overwhelm you with how many rows of columns you saw. Instead of pillar after pillar after pillar, you have two pillars. Now, they're gigantic, colossal, multi-pillars built together. But your brain says one, two, not overwhelming.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

And then you look around and there's all these different side altars, sure, but they're all kind of spaced out. There's kind of blank space in between. That doesn't draw your eye, so that, unlike the Renaissance, the early Renaissance art and the art that came before it, it's not image on top of image on top of image. It's things that are bite-sized, but they help you to focus. Now you can look up into, for example, Michelangelo's dome, and you can see saint after saint after saint, all in the panoply around, and so, if you want that, you can find it. But most of what's going to draw your eye is the"baldacchino" over the "confessio" that says: While you're right here, peter is here.

Joan Watson:

Yeah, there's a piece there that you might not expect, and it's because of that symmetry. And if you're overwhelmed, it's because of the immensity and the human emotions of being there, I think, are more overwhelming that the structure is not overwhelming, despite its size.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

Honestly,yeah.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

Especially in the Jubilee year with all the crowds that are there. The people themselves are part of the experience when you are being jostled by literally millions of people this year. I mean, they're expecting 90-some million people to visit the Basilica this year.

Joan Watson:

From all over the world.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

From all over the world. Look out for the nuns. They are best with the elbows and it's their house, they know it, so they will get between you.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

Hold on to your tour mates. It's really the universality of the church in living color.

Joan Watson:

Yeah, yeah, I'm glad. So two things you mentioned. Number one the "baldacchino", and I want to come back to that because people are like, wait, what did Father say? So I want to come back to that. But you mentioned right away this idea of like being a shopping mall, like this idea that there are lots of altars. And I think for many Americans, maybe not other Europeans, but for many Americans that might be something new, because my parish church has the high altar and maybe a freestanding altar in front of it, right. So most of us just are used to having this one altar where mass is celebrated and not many side altars. So can you talk a little bit about that? Because that's just one, I think one of the most unique things for an American experience.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

Yeah, so to start with the architectural style itself, so it's called a basilica from the "court of the king, right, the "Basileus" was the king, and so he had this long hallway with a curve at the end we call the apse. That would project his voice down the hallway. So while you were waiting in line to meet the king, you got to hear his reverberating voice, you approached his justice and you were in awe and majesty before this great person. And that long hall with a curved end became the standard for Roman legal buildings, and therefore, even their temples had a lot of that same structure. Now, when Christians started building churches, when we started making basilica churches, we Christianized it. We put in a transept, right, so you have the vertical and now you have this horizontal bar on it as well. Well, what are you going to do with those two sides? Just stack in more chairs? No, now you have an opportunity for an extra altar at each of those ends. So now you have your main focal point in the center, which should say Peter's Basilica, and where the cross comes together, you have the papal altar. On the back wall, in the apse, you have the chair of St. Peter, that symbol of the universal connection of the apostles with their head. They're first among the apostles, Peter, and then on the side chapels you have other altars. So, for example, the one side altar that they use for daily mass is the St Joseph altar, and right next to him are the graves of two other apostles, Simon and Jude, and so there are The one of those two is right at the closest point in the basilica to where Peter was actually crucified. So on that side altar, you have a celebration of the martyrdom of Peter himself, and an image of Peter being crucified upside down on his cross. So somebody who's never heard the story of Peter before can come in, go to that side altar and not, you know, just pay their respects to Jesus and the Blessed Sacrament, but also see that image and go hey, why is that guy upside down? Oh, that's how Peter was killed. Peter was crucified, yeah, but not like Jesus. And then you get to hear more of the story. It's a catechism in stone. That's another one of the beautiful ways to describe it.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

And then, because there's so much history in this Basilica, I mean you talk about dozens of saints. I don't want to throw numbers at you because I get conflicting reports. So from the Vatican's own St Peter's Basilica website, right Basilicasanpietro. va, 25 altars on the main floor, 12 chapels below. Okay.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

So if you bear that in mind, those are 25 individual places celebrating a significant figure, whether that was a pope or a saint, or one who was both. So in the case of Pope St. John Paul II, he's got his own altar on the main floor, now very popular. The Polish people, they love him. His altar is always busy. But you have other greats in history, like literal greats, like Pope St. Gregory the Great has his altar. Pope St. Leo the Great has his altar with a big bas-relief of him rebuking Attila the Hun, one of my personal favorites. Everything down to some of the funeral monuments don't have their own altar but, like my favorite funeral monument, the funeral monument of Pope Alexander VII is over a doorway. It's the fire exit out the sacristy side. So it was my favorite door because that was the door I got to come into for liturgies in the Vatican when I had the special golden ticket.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

Yeah but then you come in underneath and you're like oh, what is that? There's a foot. No, wait, no, that's the artwork of this beautiful funeral monument, also by Bernini the skeleton of death with the hourglass: Remember you will die.

Joan Watson:

Again, that catechism in stone.

Joan Watson:

Every piece of art is teaching us something and reminding us of something.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

And not just teaching you, but drawing your mind to the transcendent. So Bernini made granite and marble look like cloth. You're coming through the bedclothes of this guy who's kneeling down in prayer at his bedside, you know, remembering death so that he'll be a good pope. And that's not a curtain, that's stone, and it looks soft 500 years later. It's so impressive, but it's not overwhelming.

Joan Watson:

Yeah, yeah. So we have all these different altars. Sometimes you know, like the big mosaic above the altars to one saint, but then there's another saint buried underneath, and so you could spend days there and still discover something new. But I want to talk a little bit about this baldacchino, because you threw out this great word and people probably can picture it in their head if they know what it is. But they might not know what the baldacchino is all about, but I bet they can picture it once you start describing it.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

So the best place to start is if you've ever done a Eucharistic procession outdoors Typically they will carry over the monstrance they'll have some kind of a canopy, okay, so think of the baldacchino as the canopy over the Eucharist. Now it does two things. Number one if you have an outdoor altar, the literally keeps you out of the rain and the sun. So that's nice, keep the old priest healthy. But the other thing that it does is it draws your attention. It says, hey, focus on this.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

So everything on the walls is stone and mosaic. So the mosaics are the little pieces of glass set in plaster to make what was at one time a painting into something permanent and enduring, right so that that most of what you're looking at is hard stone. And then in the midst of that, all of a sudden you have this big metal thing and the bronze is again It's different texture, it's covered in vines and bees and living things that again pull you in, and it's got these swirling Jewish-style columns that are architecturally and artistically different from everything around it, again drawing your eye in. And then it's this high contrast of colors. They've just cleaned it up. So when we were here last March, we were so mad because the baldacchino was covered in scaffolding and like, oh, we don't get to see it. But then this year, just before we got here, they opened it up and it is stunning. The gold of the polished bronze against the black of the matte finish. The contrast there, the black and gold.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

Really it focuses you and it draws you in and says this is special, what's under this? And if you look up in the dome, you have the image of God, the Father. You look under the canopy of the baldacchino and you have the Holy Spirit dove, and what's underneath that? The altar. So you have the Father, the Spirit and the Son, all pointing down to the rock on which Christ said "I will build my church. We have the whole presence of the Trinity, supported by the humanity of the saints, and it all comes together in a place where we gather around the throne of God. Right, the "worthy are those that are welcome to the supper of the Lamb". So when Jesus said to Peter, "feed my sheep". And 2,000 years later we're going to Peter to receive the Eucharist from his successor, all of what we believe comes into focus in those moments.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

And when you see people treating Pope Francis like a rock star he is an old man in a wheelchair, right, he is not impressive in any worldly sense and say a prayer for him. We're going to have the rosary here at nine o'clock, a vigil for Pope Francis. And it's so beautiful because it's nine o'clock at night on a rainy day in Rome and people are lining up to sit in folding chairs in St. Peter's Square and pray the rosary in Italian. It's not going to be comfy, it's not going to be pleasant in any earthly sense. Sure, you might see some famous person while you're there, some cardinal, so-and-so but you're also going to be elbow to elbow with people from Korea, people from Africa, people from every part of humanity will be present there Catholics, non-catholics. It's really beautiful.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

So one of my favorites in St Peter's Basilica, one of the people that's buried there, is St. Josephat, right. He's one of the bishops of one of the Eastern churches, and St. Josephat was killed because he wanted to bring his Eastern Orthodox congregation into union with Rome again. That wasn't real popular in the East at the time. So he's there. He's buried here in St Peter's in the West, even though he is an Eastern bishop, and he's treated with the same dignity and respect as popes, and he's, of course, right next to where they hear confessions. So the one who reconciled East and West is there where you can be reconciled with Jesus. Isn't that perfect? I love all these connections.

Joan Watson:

That's the crazy thing about being at St. Peter's is if you know church history or you know anything about the saints and you're kneeling there and you look up and you're like, "wait a minute, that's wait, that's the tomb of Joseph at?" And then you look over and you're like "that's Gregory Nazianzus and that's". You know these people that were giants in the church and are here under this roof. So it's, it's, it's, yes, it's the tomb of Peter and he's under the high altar. And there's something incredibly poignant with having the successor of Peter celebrate mass on that high altar, knowing that underneath are the bones of St. Peter.

Joan Watson:

But then you're also surrounded by this church history and Leo the Great and Gregory the Great and Pius X and Joseph at, and yeah.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

And you can go down the main aisle and find your local cathedral, wherever its size, you know, is marked off from the back wall. So in the central aisle and this is something about those superhuman things right, it's so. It's, it's almost petty really. It's like, haha, we're bigger than your church. So, like, you go down the marble floor and you'll find this brass insert that will say, for example, St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, and then you look back and there's another hundred yards of St. Peter's Basilica after that, like, oh, I thought St Patrick's was big. Then I came here and you look up at the Baldacchino again.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

Okay, so the Baldacchino is in the central under the canister of the dome. Okay, and when you look at that space and you try to think how big is this really? And you realize you could fit the space shuttle with its booster rockets and launch pad all under that dome without scraping the sides. The Statue of Liberty would not be able to reach the ceiling with her torch.

Joan Watson:

That's crazy, yeah, and again it doesn't seem like that when you're in there because of that unity and that symmetry, it's incredible.

Joan Watson:

You're completely thrown off that sense, and so it's good when you're there to think about those things and to try to picture that, because it gives you that immensity. But could you speak a little bit about the altar of the chair as well? You had mentioned that earlier on the back wall by Bernini.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

Sure, yep, well, we just had the feast of the chair of St. Peter.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

And again, this is what sets it apart from St. John in the Lateran, which is the Cathedral of Rome, of the Diocese of Rome, because the Holy Father is also the Bishop of the Diocese of Rome. But what St. Peter's Basilica represents is that universality, and the monument on the wall is a chair. It is a reliquary of an older chair that was believed to be from St. Peter himself. I'm not going to dive into the veracity or non-veracity of that, that's for people much smarter than me to figure out, but what it represents is the connection of the universal church, through Peter, to the Holy Spirit, because above this beautiful bronze chair set in the wall is what looks like a stained glass window of the Holy Spirit. Now, it's not glass, it's actually thin slices of alabaster stone, right. This predates stained glass, if you can imagine that this was the first of an art style. And that Holy Spirit window. There's a cloud emanating from that window. That is what is supporting the chair.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

If you look, the chair is kind of floating in the midair over the altar, and there are four bishops who are tied by ribbons to the chair, but they're not holding up the chair right. So two from the East, two from the West: Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine, and I forget who the fourth one is. Oh, I hate being put on the spot. So four bishops, two from the East, two from the West, and they represent the universality of the church. And then you pair that with, up above the words that are going around the Basilica, which is the confession of Peter right: "Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep". And when what's in Latin in the words gets to that center point over the Holy Spirit window from the West on the left, in Latin it switches over to Greek for a little while.

Joan Watson:

Oh, I didn't know that

Father Matthew Kuhn:

You never noticed that before, have you?

Father Matthew Kuhn:

It's so seamless, but the letters switch to Greek for the rest of the apse to show "Hey, you Greek speakers, you Eastern churches, you're still part of us. This is for you too", and it's the Holy Spirit that holds the whole thing together.

Joan Watson:

Beautiful. That's such an important part about the chair, because I was actually I heard somebody giving a tour one time and they talked about how the bishops are holding up the chair and I said no, no, no, no, no. They've gotten it completely wrong. That's the beauty of it that the Holy Spirit gives the authority.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

Can we talk about the humanity of that moment, though I mean because I've given a lot of St. Peter's tours and I've said wrong things. I was fed bad intel, so to speak. Some of the stuff we were working from just wasn't accurate, and I've been on many tours since then and I've learned and I've improved my knowledge of it and my appreciation for it. So don't let something like that that somebody said no, that's not accurate Don't let that get in the way. There are misunderstandings out there, and there are bad tours. Just remember you can always go back to the source. So BasilicaSanPietro. va, that is the official Basilica of St. Peter web page, and not only does it have fantastic pictures, but it even has little informational pages. Okay. So, for example, I can look up, like I just did, St. Ambrose, S t. Augustine, St. Athanasius, and St. John Chrysostom are the four bishops tied to the chair, right.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

So this was again commissioned by Pope Alexander VI, who I mentioned. His funeral monument commissioned Bernini to complete that piece of work. So two Greeks and two Latins, and these giants of the church are all tied to the history, right, they're all bishops, they're all successors of the apostles, but they all still depend on Peter. So, even though none of them were popes, none of them were the successors of Peter directly as bishops of Rome, but they were all Wait a minute, no, they weren't even all bishops. Yeah, John Chrysostom was a bishop too. Yeah, yeah.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

They are all bishops, yeah, yeah. Athanasius and Alexander, John Chrysostom, Constantinople, Augustine, Hippo, Ambrose, Milan, yeah, all bishops, sorry.

Joan Watson:

There's just wearing the miter, because of the West and the East, I think probably.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

Yeah, yeah, so different styles and different times. So there again. So, like we have these images of popes that are all dressed in red, and so people who don't know say, oh, those must just be cardinals. Like, well, no, up until the Dominican pope, they all wore red. And just because this Dominican is really attached to his white habit, he kind of changed the style, and the guys after him said, yeah, we kind of like the white, but they kept the red shoes. No, this is important, they kept the red shoes because they walk the path of martyrdom. And this was before Gucci was a thing.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

So you know, it's not just because the red shoes are Gucci, it's it again There's those things, there's those layers of history that, when you peel them back, you appreciate it more, even if the initial story is is very human, like, no, he just cause he, he was a dominican. Well, but why do the Dominicans wear white? Well, it's their devotion to our Blessed Mother, and that they're striving for that purity, that clarity of reason, and that purity of heart. That is the, the, the reason for choosing white for the habit. Well, doesn't the papacy strive for that same kind of teaching clarity, that same aspect of life? Yeah, as long as we don't lose the connection to the road of the martyrs.

Joan Watson:

Yes, yeah, I love that. That's what they're called too. I know we could talk for hours about this, and so I know we don't have hours to talk about it. I'm going to put you on the spot. Could you give us kind of a few either can't miss things to see, or maybe your favorite place?

Father Matthew Kuhn:

Well, I can't believe we've talked this long about St. Peter's Basilica and we haven't mentioned the Pietà. That is the one can't- miss-it piece of art in the Basilica, hands down. Michelangelo's earliest masterpiece. So before he did anything else for the Basilica, he did this altar piece for a side altar in a different church and it was so famous they had to bring it to St. Peter's, because everybody would come to Rome and they say, well, but where's the Pietà? Okay, bring it over here, they're all going to want to see it. Let's just put it in the place they're all going to anyway. So you have the image of Mary holding the body of Jesus after he's been taken down from the cross, and the serenity of Mary's face accepting in her compassion the cost of our salvation, so her participation in the passion of Christ, receiving His body into her arms. And then it's up on this little pedestal above the altar, and it was a specific white marble chosen by Michelangelo to match the white of the bread of the host. So when the priest at the altar raises the body of Christ: this is my body which will be given up for you and he holds up the host, the host melds into the body of Jesus in Mary's arms. And it's right there, and you can see it behind some very protective glass now, thanks to some unfortunate accidents of history, but it's right there as you walk in. So you come through the holy door. We're in the Jubilee year, you're going to enter through the holy door and right the first thing you meet when you come into the arms of mother church is Mary, the model and mother of the church. So she's the one who welcomes you, says here's my son. This is what you're really here for. You think you're here to see all this art, you' re here for Jesus, don't forget. So that's the first, don't miss a thing. The second one is that funeral monument that I mentioned of Pope Alexander VII. The third one not to be missed, um, because it is just, it is so, so typical of the Italian people, is the bronze statue of Saint Peter. Now you can't go up and touch it anymore, but for centuries people came to Saint Peter's and they would, because the towns are very tactile people, they like to touch things. They would rub their hands on the feet of this, of this statue of Saint Peter, and it's been going on for so long that Peter has no toes left. Human hands wore away bronze. That's how many people have reached out in faith to touch an image, just an image, of this great saint um, and that's you know. You can call it superstition, but when you meet the Italian people, they have their superstitions. This is different. This is that real, "I want to hold you" tactile faith. That, has to be honest, made Rome such a good place to have a place like St. Peter's. You have a people for whom hospitality is the cultural central point, and these are the people welcoming us to this great church. Not every culture would share a place like this, but they love it. They put it on their coins. You can't "welcome to Rome and then they imagine like, if you speak a foreign language and they don't understand what you're asking, they'll probably just point you to Saint Peters, because that's probably what you're asking, um, and then they'll say sempre diritto, just keep going forward.

Joan Watson:

I remember the first time I went to Saint Peters to touch his foot, it just it really felt like my pilgrimage had I'd made it like. It felt like kind of that crowning moment, praying it is too, absolutely, but that just seemed to like cap the pilgrimage.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

Like okay, like any good penance in confession, you should be able to know when you've accomplished it.

Joan Watson:

Yes!

Father Matthew Kuhn:

So when you've touched the foot, you've made it to Peter. Yeah smart calls.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

You know we want to have smart calls, um, so don't overlook the, the experience as a whole. I would say that's another thing that people, uh, fail to do. They come and they want to get pictures of everything. Put down the camera. Take it all in. So after you see the particular monuments you want to see and you visited these great saints, and you see the particular monuments you want to see and you visited these great saints and you said your prayers and you lit your candles and all of that good stuff, just stop and watch the faithful and look at the sea of people who have all come, whether they know it or not, to have an encounter with God, and those that come with great understanding you'll see them weeping. And those that have absolutely innocent faith you'll see them weeping too. And those in the middle who were too smart to weep and were not smart enough to weep. We need to take it all in and just appreciate vicariously through those who get it either at the gut level or at the brain level. Um, there's something special here.

Joan Watson:

Amen. Thank you, father.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

Thank you!

Joan Watson:

That's yeah, you've said it all, right, there.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

Great.

Joan Watson:

Thank you. Thanks for joining us and I hope you've made everybody want to go to St Peter's. But we will also put that website in the show notes so that people can kind of investigate for themselves and learn for themselves, because there is the riches that are there.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

Well, what they need to do is call Verso and get over here. Well, that's what they need to do.

Joan Watson:

There's still time before the Jubilee year is over too.

Joan Watson:

Still time so well. Thank you so much, father.

Father Matthew Kuhn:

I appreciate you all, that you all do Appreciate you. You take care.

Joan Watson:

G od bless. Do you want to experience this historic event in the life of the church for yourself? Whether you want to take a group or you're just an individual looking for a trip, Verso Ministries can make that dream a reality. Visit versoministriescom slash jubilee for all our jubilee dates and for more information.

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Joan Watson

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John Paul Lichon

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