Upon This Ice I Will Build My Church, Says Leo XIV

If the Pope builds his church on such a rock it has not long for this world

Well, we have had the news, we have had the picture, and we have had Roger Watson’s judgement – a sound one – but I fear that, since this story concerns his Holiness the Pope, we also need a bit of history and theology. Or untheology, as the case may be.

For a thousand years Jesus spoke Latin and though I have little Latin and less Greek, I always remember the phrase “super hanc Petram”: which means: on, or I suppose, literally, above this rock. “Super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam,” said Jesus in the Vulgate. “On this rock I shall build my church.” It is the only known instance of Jesus joking, since he was playing on the name of Peter. This is from Matthew 16:18. In (archaic) English it is: “And I say unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” The play on words is there in the original Greek (and it is likely that Jesus spoke Greek, as a cosmopolitan Galilean): “Su ei Petros, kai epi taute te petra oikodomeso mou ten ekklesian.”