Vatican City, Jul 3, 2019 / 10:50 am (CNA).- Pope Francis gave unexpectedly a reliquary containing what are believed to be bone fragments of St. Peter to Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew, an ecumenical gesture that has generated controversy among some Catholics.

The pope took the reliquary from the chapel in the papal apartments, where Pope Saint Paul VI had placed the bronze reliquary containing eight bone fragments after they were discovered in a 1952 dig under St. Peter’s Basilica.