And here is where I might say something again about the ‘Petrine Primacy,’ for when we use the word “successor,” as it pertains to the office of pope, and the person who occupies it, what we are referring to is the line of succession in which participate all of those figures who have at some point been, or will one day be, bishop of Rome (which is the actual position that the pope fills), going backward through time, to the first century, and the very first bishop of Rome, the apostle Peter, who ended his life there, in martyrdom (under the Roman Emperor Nero), and to whom Christ himself had said, years before, when they were still in Galilee, if we are to believe what is written in the Gospel of Matthew, the following words: “And I tell thee this in my turn, that thou art Peter, and it is upon this rock that I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it; and I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”