February 22 is the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter the Apostle, kept at Rome since at least the fourth century. The "chair" is the cathedra — the bishop's seat — and the feast honours the office of the Bishop of Rome as the successor of Peter, the rock on which Christ built his Church (Matthew 16:18). The relics of the wooden chair traditionally venerated as Peter's are enshrined in the gilt-bronze reliquary by Bernini at the apse of St. Peter's Basilica.
The feast was kept in two forms in the ancient calendar — the Chair of Peter at Antioch on February 22 and the Chair of Peter at Rome on January 18 — until Pope John XXIII's 1960 rubrical reform united them on February 22. The Antiochene chair recalls Peter's first episcopal see, founded before he came to Rome; the Roman chair, his final see and the site of his martyrdom.
The feast is a Roman one, and the natural pilgrimage is to Rome: to the cathedra in St. Peter's, to the Mamertine prison where Peter was held, to the church of Quo Vadis on the Via Appia where the tradition says Christ met him fleeing the city. From Rome the office of Peter extends to every Catholic diocese, and every cathedral holds its own cathedra — but the Roman one is the head.
