Jesus didn’t just forgive St. Peter in John 21:15-17 — he gave him authority. Here’s what that passage says:

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ He said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ A second time he said to him, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ He said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.’

Jesus — as he did so often — singles Peter out by name. He rarely did that with any other disciple. And he is talking about how it is Peter’s role to guide the sheep and teach the Christian flock. It’s all perfectly consistent with Petrine primacy and the papacy. Jesus is the Good Shepherd. So is Peter, in the earthly sense. The shepherd tends to his flock. Jesus’ “sheep” are clearly Christian believers. This is the flock Peter feeds and tends in a universal sense.

Jesus asks Peter three times if he loved him, and when Peter replies, Jesus tells him to “feed my lambs” (21:15) and “tend my sheep” (21:16) and “feed my sheep” (21:17). Why does he do that? It’s because — again — Peter was the leader of the disciples, and by extension, the future Church, and that’s what leaders do. We see here the shepherd and the sheep who follow him — the sheep he cares for. It seems rather obvious that the deeper meaning is Peter as the Chief Shepherd of and over other Christians.

Acts 20:28 is sometimes brought up as a supposed counter-evidence against Petrine primacy: “Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God which he obtained with the blood of his own Son.”

But it’s not at all. It’s talking about bishops, who do indeed oversee flocks, but only limited, localized ones. Hence, this passage was directed to the “elders” of Ephesus, which was only one local church (what we would call today a diocese).

They are to care for that particular flock, whereas Peter (singularly addressed by Our Lord) is ultimately to tend and feed the entire Church, not just a local section. John 21 shows that Peter is unique, as opposed to the other disciples being addressed as a collective. It’s much like referring to the president of the United States, as compared to the collectives of senators or congressmen in the House or cabinet members.

Peter’s ministry to the Church is always universal; his jurisdiction knows no bounds, and the language that Christ himself applies to him is strikingly sublime and profound. For to no one else was it granted the keys of the kingdom of heaven. No one else was renamed “Rock,” and proclaimed by Jesus to be the foundation upon which he would build his Church.

And although the power to bind and loose was given to the disciples as a whole in Matthew 18:18, nevertheless, Peter is the only individual to be given this power by Christ. In other words, St. Peter has extraordinary privileges unique to himself, and in cases where they are not exclusive, they are applied to him in a preeminent sense.

We find then, that the scriptural relation between Christ, Peter and the disciples (by extension, bishops and priests), is precisely that found in the teaching and practice of the Catholic Church, where the pope, more than just the “foremost among equals,” as the Orthodox and some Lutherans and Anglicans hold, is the supreme shepherd and leader of the Church, yet not in such a fashion as to exclude Christ as the head or the cardinals and bishops (and even laymen) as fellow members of the Body in Christ acting in organic harmony.

Always, it is the pope and the cardinals, the pope and the Council, the pope acting with due consideration of the faithful lay members of the Church — but the pope is supreme. It’s simply not necessary to dichotomize the relationship between the pope and lesser clergy. With regard to the papacy, only Catholicism does justice to both the scriptural data and the course of the early Church in the formative years of its development.

Without doubt John 21 also expresses a parallelism with Peter’s three denials, but that no more proves that Peter wasn’t pope, or not indicated as such in this passage, than David’s sin with Bathsheba and murder of her husband proved that he wasn’t king, or the subject of a covenant with God, or the writer of most of the Psalms. St. Paul killed Christians before God knocked him off his high horse.

But the Bible teaches that almost everyone — the Blessed Virgin Mary being an exception — has sinned and is subject to original sin. Isn’t Christianity about redeeming sinners? If sinners can write an inspired, inerrant, infallible Bible, they can certainly be infallible popes, too.

Moreover, 1 Peter 5:2 is an example of St. Peter addressing elders as a collective. He refers to “those in your charge” and addresses elders of a particular region in Asia Minor (Turkey): “To the exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,” (1 Peter 1:1).

Peter also acts like a pope would act in his second epistle, because it is directed toward all Christians: “To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours in the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:1).

Catholics are often told that “the papacy is nowhere seen in the Bible.” But in fact we clearly observe it in John 21:15-17 and many other passages.