Rome, Italy, Jul 3, 2007 / 09:08 am
Pope Benedict XVI has approved plans to examine the interior of an ancient stone coffin, which Vatican archeologists positively identified as that of St. Paul less than two years ago, reported Kath.net.
The coffin is beneath the main altar of the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. The position of the stone coffin has not been altered since the year 390 A.D.
Archeologists are expected to remove a plug, with which the coffin had been sealed in antiquity, and use an endoscopic probe to gather images of the contents.
The researchers are unsure about what they will find in the tomb since documentary evidence indicates that St. Paul's remains were removed from the original burial site in A.D. 258 to another part of Rome. They were then moved back to the site of the basilica when it was built over the original church in the late fourth century.