Peter

Simon, a fisherman of Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee, was called by Jesus along with his brother Andrew to become a "fisher of men". At Caesarea Philippi he was the first to confess: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God"; Jesus then named him Peter — the rock on which he would build his Church — and entrusted him with the keys of the Kingdom. A witness of the Transfiguration, he nonetheless denied his master three times on the night of the arrest, a failing the risen Christ erased by the lakeside with a threefold question of love. After Pentecost, where his sermon converted three thousand, he became the voice of the infant Church: he received the centurion Cornelius, the first pagan baptised, and at the Council of Jerusalem carried the argument that converts need not be bound by the Law of Moses. Two New Testament epistles bear his name. Tradition holds that he died in Rome under Nero, around 64, crucified head downwards at his own request, judging himself unworthy to die as Christ had; St Peter's Basilica stands over what is held to be his tomb.