mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Mistress of the Vatican
feeble and vacillating. But if the authority of the Holy See were visibly
displayed in majestic buildings, imperishable memorials and witnesses
seemingly planted by the hand of God himself, belief would grow and
strengthen. . . . Noble edifices combining taste and beauty with imposing
proportions would immensely conduce to the exaltation of the chair
of Saint Peter.” 11
The new basilica was, and still is, the largest church in the world. It
is 693 feet long, 404 feet high under the dome, and 232 feet wide,
holding some 20,000 people. It is much larger than the footprint of the
old church, which was 395 feet long and 212 feet wide. The altar is in
the center of the church, visible on all sides, and not flush against the far
wall as it had been in the old basilica.
In 1626, Urban VIII commissioned the twenty-seven-year-old Gian
Lorenzo Bernini to construct the baldachino, the 100-foot tall,
186,000-pound bronze canopy supported by twisted columns, directly
over the high altar and Saint Peter’s tomb. When digging the four tenfoot-square
foundations to support the columns, workmen realized that
below the basilica there were mausoleums and streets, an entire underground
city of the dead. The laborers who cautiously walked through
the brightly colored rooms, holding their torches high, were surprised
to find that the cemetery was both pagan and Christian.
Upon opening the coffins, they found some bodies wrapped in ancient
Christian clerical garb. Other tombs bore frescoes of dancing naked
goddesses. Urban considered the inscription on the tomb of a certain
Flavius Agricola so revolting that he had the sarcophagus thrown into
the Tiber.
If the pope was afraid of desecrating the holy grave that he hoped
was down there, he was absolutely terrified that the grave wasn’t there
at all—many Protestants insisted that Peter had never even set foot in
Rome and the Catholics had made up the story to solidify Roman
power. Urban instructed Bernini to disrupt as little as possible beneath
the altar.
Unbeknownst to Innocent and Olimpia, beneath the baldachino, beneath
Michelangelo’s giant dome, slumbered the bones of Saint Peter,
tucked away in the cavity of the second-century altar wall. They would
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