Question – Friends who recently returned from Rome told me about seeing the Confession in St Peter’s Basilica. I have been to St Peter’s several times but never heard about it or seen it. Where and what is it?
By Fr John Flader
THE Confession, or Confessio in Latin, is a chapel, or shrine, beneath the main altar of St Peter’s Basilica, accessed via a double staircase surrounded by a semi-circular balustrade in front of the altar on the floor of the Basilica.
It takes its name from the confession of faith of St Peter, for which he was martyred, and it is very close to the tomb of St Peter.
If you have visited St Peter’s, you have certainly seen the Confession, without knowing what it was.
There is evidence of a Confession close to the tomb of St Peter since the time of the fourth-century Basilica of Constantine I.
When the new St Peter’s was built in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Pope wanted to make this space visible to the faithful, and so an opening was made in the floor of the Basilica in front of the main altar with its iconic canopy with spiral bronze columns designed by the 26 year-old genius Gianlorenzo Bernini.
The Confession, designed by Carlo Maderno, was built between 1615 and 1617. Maderno designed a balustrade around it, with steps leading down so that Mass could be celebrated close to the tomb of St Peter. Previously, the area was accessed only via a small passageway from the grottoes beneath the main floor of the Basilica. The new arrangement gave St Peter’s tomb its former prominence.
The balustrade has 74 white marble balusters alternated by 24 small pillars of Eastern alabaster.
The steps were made from parts of the architrave of the Constantinian Basilica, and undoubtedly still retain its moulding on the underside.
The entrance gate to the stairs is decorated with heraldic lilies from the coat of arms of Pope Pius VI (1775-1799). The balustrade overlooking the Confession is a popular place of prayer to St Peter for the Church.
One of the principal features of the Confession, on its far wall and directly under the main altar of the Basilica, is a niche known as the Niche of the Pallium.
In this niche a bronze coffer, or chest, is placed containing the “pallia”, circular stoles woven from white wool with six black silk crosses on them, to be given to Metropolitan Archbishops and Patriarchs by the Holy Father, usually on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, 29 June (cf. J. Flader, Question Time 2, q. 175).
The coffer, donated by Pope Benedict XIV (1740-1758), used to be on permanent display there, but this led to the confusion of people thinking it contained the bones of St Peter. At present the coffer is placed there on the night before the Holy Father confers the pallia.
The woollen pallium symbolises the two-fold responsibilities of shepherding the flock entrusted to the Archbishop or Patriarch and of fostering communion with the Vicar of Christ.
The placing of the pallia in the coffer close to the tomb of St Peter provides a direct link to St Peter.
It is a symbol of Apostolic Succession, and of continuity with the Apostles.
On the left of the gate to the Niche of the Pallium is a bronze statue of St Peter and on the right a bronze statue of St Paul.
On the left and right walls of the Niche itself are mosaics of St Peter and St Paul.
On the ceiling of the Confession are three frescoes by Giovan Battista Ricci.
The fresco on the left depicts St Anacletus having a small chapel built over the tomb of St Peter.
In the centre St Sylvester consecrates the altar in the presence of Constantine, and on the right Pope Paul V (1605-1621) kneels in prayer with his cardinals before the recently decorated Confession.
There are numerous gilded oil lamps just inside the balustrade, along the stairs leading down and in front of the Niche of Pallium.
They are burning day and night, representing the constant prayer to St Peter for the Church and the Holy Father.
In 1979, Pope St John Paul II inaugurated a new opening from the grottoes into the Confession.
Above an arch over this opening is the inscription SEPULCRVM SANCTI PETRI – APOSTOLI: Tomb of St Peter the Apostle.
Two high reliefs of angels, probably from the monument of Boniface VIII (1295-1303) in the old Basilica, are on the sides of the opening.
