As a Peace Corps volunteer, Tom Bissell was hiking through a village in Kyrgyzstan one day, and an old Russian woman offered to take him to see the tomb of St. Matthew.
"I remember thinking: 'The tomb of Matthew? I thought he was buried in Jerusalem or Italy or somewhere like that,'" Bissell recalled in an interview with Catholic News Service. But Kyrgyzstan, he soon learned, also had a claim on the apostle's final resting place.
The woman led Bissell to the ruins of a monastery next to Lake Issyk Kul, where according to local legend the saint's relics were transported by Armenian monks in the fifth century. It was a small marker in the remote reaches of Central Asia.
"That planted the seed," Bissell said. He began to wonder about the rest of the apostles, and discovered that many of them ended up in pretty strange places.
Bissell, a highly regarded travel and nonfiction writer, is at the American Academy in Rome this year working on a book on the tombs of the Twelve Apostles.
Pretty strange places, indeed. Here's a list of where they're believed to have gone after Pentecost. India, Persia, Armenia... The Church spread far beyond just the missions of Paul that are recounted in Acts. And some of those places still have active Churches that trace their history back to their apostolic missionaries. Fascinating.
(A belated tip of the Akubra to Dappled Things.)
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