That was God’s will for him and God’s answer to the fervent prayer of the Church, that he should not be put to death with St James in the capital of the Jewish world by the puppet King Herod Agrippa, but rather that he should be martyred with St Paul in the capital of the whole world by the Emperor Nero.

And looking back we can see why that was.  The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church (1), and of no one was that more true than of St Peter, the leader of the Apostles, the close disciple of his Lord, chosen to witness the Transfiguration and the Agony in Gethsemane, Peter who played so prominent a part on Good Friday, who denied his Master, who witnessed the Empty Tomb and, alone of the Apostles, met his Risen Lord in private by himself; who was restored by the Lake of Galilee and there entrusted with the pastoral oversight of the Lord’s flock; and who, on the Day of Pentecost, stood out as the leader of the Church.

Yes, the martyrdom of St Peter in the great city of Rome, the centre of civilisation for hundreds of years to come, was an act of witness which not only guaranteed the honesty and integrity of the Apostles – and therefore of the truth of the Gospel which he preached – but also was a shining inspiration for many a generation of Christians afterwards in the fires of the great persecutions through which the Church had to pass.