Season 4: The Wildcatter
George Strake
On November 24, 2013, Pope Francis came to the loggia, his balcony, looking out on St. Peter’s Square with a major announcement that the bones of St. Peter had been discovered and he displayed 9 of those fragments as first class relics to the packed house of faithful gathered in the Square.
This was a momentous occasion in the history of the Catholic Church as the search for St. Peter had literally been going on for 2,000 years. While the search had been going on for for that long, it went to a new level in 1939 when a Vatican worker fell 30 feet through the floor under St. Peter’s Basilica and landed in a dusty and undisturbed tomb that turned out to be a network of catacombs and over 40 pagan burial tombs. Pope Pius the XII immediately saw the opportunity and started an archeological project that ultimately led to that day in 2013 with Pope Francis standing on his balcony hugging 9 bone fragments.
One man critical to this project was a Texas oilman, or wildcatter, whose involvement was only known by a select group of Vatican leaders but whose contributions would impact the faith of millions for centuries to come. In this season of Holy Donors, we will tell you the story of a man who was orphaned at the age of 7, taught himself to read by studying the Bible, invested his last dollar to dig an oil well fueled by nothing but his hunch and personally bankrolled a decade-long, secret dig under the Vatican to find the bones of St. Peter.