Papal Intercession: sermon on the feast of Saints Peter & Paul

By a Dominican Friar   |   25 June 2025

“Thou shalt make them princes over all the earth: they shall remember thy name, O Lord”

Although this Sunday is the feast of both St Peter and St Paul, the texts of the Mass speak almost entirely of St Peter, which is why the following day is set aside for commemorating St Paul. So, following the example of the liturgy and by the leave of the great apostle of the nations, I’ll confine myself to speaking about St Peter.

It is of course right for all Catholics to venerate the prince of the apostles, the man chosen personally by our Lord Jesus Christ to be His first vicar on earth. But it is especially suitable for Catholics in England to do this, since this land has long had a special devotion to St Peter. Historians tell us that before the Reformation, the number of churches in England dedicated to St Peter exceeded those dedicated to St John the Baptist, St Paul, and St John the Evangelist combined. Only to our Lady were more churches dedicated.

No doubt, this devotion of England to St Peter is connected to the fact that we owe our conversion, or more strictly our reconversion, to the interest and energy of a great pope, St Gregory I. The story of his encounter with the English boys in the slave-market in Rome is too well known to need retelling. Having become pope and having sent the monk St Augustine as the head of a group of missionaries to this country, when he heard of the success of the latter’s preaching, he was naturally delighted. St Gregory wrote to his missionary bishop the following words:

“Who can tell what gladness has filled the hearts of all here to know that the English race, by the working of the grace of God Almighty, and by your labours, has been illuminated by the light of our holy faith, which expels the darkness of error, and has with free mind trodden underfoot those idols to which aforetime they were subject.”

In 1895, Pope Leo XIII recalled these words of his predecessor in a letter addressed to “the English people who seek the kingdom of Christ in the unity of faith”. Leo stated that perhaps in no other country had there flourished so keen and intense a love for the see of Peter as in this one. He also recalled how, as a nuncio in Belgium, in the 1840s, he had met an Englishman called Ignatius Spencer, who had started a crusade of prayer for the conversion of England. He is now Venerable Ignatius, and we can hope that he will soon be raised to the altars.

Pope Leo wrote to encourage a general return of English people to the faith, and for some decades after his letter, the Church in this country enjoyed continuous expansion, with many conversions. Since then, alas, there has been another turn of the tide; and what St Gregory the Great would certainly have called “the darkness of error” has returned with a vengeance. Nevertheless, our saints are still there: our ancient saints, such as St Bede, St Etheldreda, and St Cuthbert; and our modern ones, such as St John Henry Newman, and let us hope, soon Ignatius Spencer. The holy popes, too, St Gregory the Great, yes, and St Peter himself, still intercede for us from heaven. May we therefore, to whom it has fallen, not through our own merits, to preserve Christian faith and charity in this land at this time, not be found wanting to our great vocation.