Personal opinion? Oh, come now. Though you would like to relegate it to personal opinion you would be denying some very diligent scholars. Even the RCC had problems trying to prove it as I showed in my previous post.
A 2009 critical study by Otto Zwierlein has concluded that "there is not a single piece of reliable literary evidence (and no archaeological evidence either) that Peter ever was in Rome." (Pieter W. van der Horst, review of Otto Zwierlein, Petrus in Rom: die literarischen Zeugnisse. Mit einer kritischen Edition der Martyrien des Petrus und Paulus auf neuer handschriftlicher Grundlage, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009, in Bryn Mawr Classical Review)
1 Clement, a document that has been dated anywhere from the 90s to the 120s, is one of the earliest sources adduced in support of Peter's stay in Rome, but questions have been raised about the text's authenticity and whether it has any knowledge about Peter's life beyond what is contained in the New Testament Acts.[42] The Letter to the Romans attributed to St. Ignatius of Antioch implies that Peter and Paul had special authority over the Roman church, telling the Roman Christians: "I do not command you, as Peter and Paul did". However, the authenticity of this document and its traditional dating to c. 105–10 have also been questioned, and it may date from the final decades of the 2nd century.
CynicalBear:
Well, ok this Otto Zwierlen states questions whether Clement of Rome and the Ignatian letters are valid.
Fr. Jurgens in his 3-volume work on The Faith of the Early Fathers states that the authenticity of this letters had been questioned by “Protestant scholars” because of their clear hierarachial model of the church along with a monarchial Bishop. The validity of these letters has long been vindicated by the likes of Anglican Patristic Scholars J.B. Lightfoot and Lutheran-Reformed ones such as A.D. Harnack and Theodore Zahn.
Cleary more recent Anglican Patristic Scholars such as Owen Chadwich and J.N.D. Kelly support the validity of the Ignatian corpus as does perhaps the most well known American patristic Scholar, Jaraslov Pelikan who died a few years ago and he too was a Lutheran-Reformed guy before becoming Eastern Orthodox.
Fr. Jurgens closes his introduction on the Igantian Letters with the statement that these letters are almost Universally accepted.
So given that statement by Fr. Jurgens, one of the well known Catholic Patristic Scholars of the later 20th century, he as a scholar does acknowledge that there is a minority opinion that questions the validity of the Ignatian corpus.
So, Otto Zwierlein is apparently one such scholar today that is in the minority opinion.
CynicalBear
I went to look up this Prof. Otto Zwierlen and from what I can determine from the link above, he is a Classics Professor, which means [and I am sure you do know this so don’t take this as an insult] that he is in the field of Latin and Greek literature from antiquity.
Apparently, he became interested in early Christian Literature and from what I gathered, he does not believe Peter was in Rome, as you noted, and he believes his marytrdom was a “Legend”
So on that point alone, one questions rather or not this guy is an orthodox Christian of any confession, Lutheran, Reformed or Catholic as St. Peters martydom is alluded in the New Testament in the Gospel of St. John.
His statement that the Ignatian letters may date to the late 2nd century says “may” there are others who state they date from the early 1st century. There are however, some letters attribute to Ignatius that are spurrios as the scholarly consensus on that is clear across many church confessions.
However, his view on the Ignatian epistles is in the minority, as is his view that Peter was not in Rome and his view that Peter was not martyred seems to me to be as close to direct attack on the Gospel of St. Johan as one could make [cf. John 21:19].
Based on the wikipedia write-up, and I know that is a readers digest summary of Prof. Otto Zwierlien, it appears to me that he is part of the higher-criticism school so popular German academia.