Saul of Tarsus was a Pharisee and a Roman citizen who consented to the stoning of Stephen. On the road to Damascus he was struck down and heard Christ ask why he persecuted him. After his baptism he spent three decades founding and writing to churches from Antioch to Corinth; thirteen New Testament letters bear his name.
He arrived in Rome as a prisoner, as the Acts of the Apostles records, and tradition holds that he was beheaded on the Via Ostiense under Nero. Christians buried him nearby, and Constantine built the first church over the grave. The basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls was rebuilt after the fire of 1823 and reconsecrated in 1854.
In 2009, at the close of the Pauline Year, Benedict XVI announced that a sarcophagus beneath the altar had been examined and that its contents were consistent with the tradition that it held the Apostle's remains. A chain venerated as Paul's is displayed in the basilica.
