When Pope Julius II blessed the foundation stone of the “new” St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome on April 18, 1506, he reportedly was lowered into the hole where the stones were being laid. Thousands of people came to watch and for the next 120 years architects and builders and artisans and popes would come and go until St. Peter’s was finished. A shortage of money for the building project was one of the components of the Protestant Reformation.
