Yes, the main area in front of the Basilica is open to all. To get to the Scavi to see where St. Peter was buried I had to go up to a Swiss guard by the gate for the area where the residences are and then go through security. I came out up a level from where the popes are entombed, a level below the main floor.
That had to be such a special experience. I have a friend who is a Syriac Orthodox bishop in Guatemala, who was at one time Roman Catholic, and who has made many pilgrimages to the tomb of St. Peter. One thing I love about the Roman Catholic Church is your hospitality to us when we visit as pilgrims the saints whose relics are in your churches, for example, we are not denied access to the myrhh-streaming relics of St. Nicholas of Myra whose relics are now in Bari, Italy.
I would very much like to do the pilgrimage of St. James the Great to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, which is incredibly beautiful and also features the world’s largest thurible. I would also like to attend the Ambrosian Rite “Liturgy of the Cloud” (I forget the Italian) on the Feast of the Holy Cross (September 14th) at the Duomo in Milan in which a large fragment of the True Cross is brought down from a reliquary by a special ornate Baroque gondola, which is one of the oldest elevators in the world, lifted by cables operated by the cathedral clergy, it carries a celebrant and altar servers up to the reliquary, where they collect the piece of the cross, and then descend with the fragment of the Cross so it can be venerated, and then it is brought back up to the reliquary, while the Litany of Loreto is chanted, which can be viewed at the following URL from the 2025 liturgy:
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This is done amidst clouds of incense (which are produced by the distinctive open-top Ambrosian thuribles, which produce much smoke, and which are moved in a clockwise pattern unlike conventional Roman, Byzantine, Syriac and Coptic thuribles which are swung (the main difference between them being that the Byzantine and Syriac thuribles have bells, and the Syriac thuribles have a handle, while the Coptic thuribles lids will stay closed from centripetal forces when the priests spin them vertically 360 degrees, which is impressive to see - mainly monastic clergy and younger clergy do this, as some elderly priests lack the strength, and you don’t want your thurible to spill, as that causes a disruption to the liturgy and is a bit of a mess.*
* This did happen on two occasions to the giant thurible at Santiago de Compostela, which to give you an idea of its scale, requires about 30 clergy to man the ropes to swing it back and forth and burns about $30,000 worth of coal and incense at each liturgy, in the 1400s or 1500s, the giant thurible broke loose, exited the cathedral through the rose window and landed in the plaza, but was repaired, and in the 19th or early 20th century the mechanism which suspends the thurible failed and it crashed to the floor spilling coal and incense, but fortunately no one was hurt, and it is now suspended from a very rugged steel structure, and as a fan of incense during as many services as it is allowed from the Liturgy of the Hours and the Mass, I love the idea of the thurible at Santiago de Compostela and what it represents, which is the ascent of our prayers to heaven, but specifically, in the sacred space of the center of the ancient pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela, where for the past thousand years people have come from all over Europe to pray by the relics of St. James the Great, who was the first of the Twelve Apostles to be martyred (his brother, St. John the Theologian, was the only one if I recall who was not martyred; additionally some members of the seventy I think escaped martyrdom; I can’t remember if St. Luke the Evangelist, who is sometimes counted among the Seventy, was martyred or not, do any of you recall?
Pope Benedict XVI wrote splendid biographies of several of the saints. My liturgical and theological library contains among other material of interest to Roman Catholics all the books published by Blessed Pope Benedict at the time of his resignation in English translation. One saint I particularly like, who is not well known in the East, who i learned of through his writings was St. Odo of Cluny, who would give children he encountered while traveling between the Cluniac monasteries coins if they would sing hymns for himself and the monks accompanying him.
I also hope with a sense of holy humor that they make St. Odo the patron saint of security chiefs on space stations if ever that becomes a thing, and the patron saint of actors in science fiction films. Rene Auberjonois was a baptized Roman Catholic.
St. Odo of Cluny, Pray for Us!
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