A good question: Why did Peter, the shepherd of the flock of Christ, go to Rome, the center of earthly power in its most centralized and most brutal manifestation yet seen. [In fact, we shouldn’t forget that China was at a similar level of power and wealth, but no higher so far as I know.]
Roman Civilization was pagan. Its military and political power was at an extremely high level and so were its various forms of culture and human development in general. Peter wasn’t pagan but he was a barbarian by Roman standards. He was uncultured in a strong sense. And he was even something of a clownish figure in Roman eyes. But his successors would one day share in the power and wealth and cultural riches of a Rome which remained a significant city in the West for some good part of two millenia. Was that power and wealth, were those cultural riches, truly important to the mortal Body of Christ?
Yes In a sense, Roman Civilization was taken over as the main part of that Body and Peter moved into Rome itself to set up a new central organ for that Body.
In making this claim, I point to some of my writings which culminated in a claim I made a few years back: The Body of Christ is the completion and perfection of human life, a completed and perfected human civilization. The Christian Church is the central organ, but not the entirety of the Body—which is the same as saying that human life in the world of the resurrected will include all legitimate human activities in some completed and perfected form and not just the activities of life in a community of worship. After all, we are said to be images of God and some of us will share the life of God in the world of the resurrected. God’s life is not restricted to just those acts of human worship, whether as Son worshiping the Father or as Father and Son and Holy Spirit being worshiped. God’s life is the fullness of life. See The Body of Christ: Why We Need a Christian Civilization and What is the Role of the Christian Church in the Public Square? for more discussion on this topic.
So, we currently have Orthodox Christian churches which are not part of any viable or dynamic civilizations (though the Russians might be on their way) and a Catholic Church domiciled in Rome of Italy—more of a joke from the viewpoint of civilization than most countries of the modern West. Rome, Italy or even all of Europe, has some wealth and little power and little in the way of living cultures which promise anything at all for the future. Even fifty years ago, it might have made sense to speculate Peter would move to the new center of Western Civilization—the United States, but Americans had plans other than reviving and nurturing a mighty and wonderful civilization from which our country had sprung. Americans had plans other than serving God even by way of being rational and morally well-ordered pagans providing good stuff for the Body of Christ. Americans most certainly weren’t about to humble themselves to become willing servants of that Body, however much the promise had been made that the servants of that Body would also be sons of God.
So it is that I note that the Roman Catholic Church seems to be dead man walking and predict that Peter will soon be packing his knapsack and heading out onto the road, most likely heading into the new complex of civilizations developing on the great Eurasian landmass, though he might still settle for at least some centuries some place on the western coast of the Americas or some other location in the Pacific Rim. (Much of the Americas is looking to be a potentially interesting and very promising mixture of North American, South American, and Asian culture. Perhaps the United States itself can eventually be rescued by that process of mixing with Mexicans and Chinese, but such processes tend to be ugly and bloody for a long time before bearing fruit.)
Before too many decades go by, Peter is more likely to be a bishop on the Pacific Rim or in Asia or the Bishop of Moscow than he is to be the bishop or Rome or the bishop of any other city in the West—other than a city on the western coast of one of the Americas.
The people and peoples of the West have truly destroyed much that was good, much that was from God, much that was given to them for safekeeping and for proper nourishing.