St. Jerome

Their story

Jerome was born around 347 in Stridon, in the region of modern-day Croatia and Slovenia. As a young man he went to Rome to study, where he fell in love with classical literature and was baptized. Later he had a dream in which he stood before the judgment seat of Christ and was told that he was a follower of Cicero rather than a Christian. The dream shook him, and he turned his great talent toward the Word of God. Jerome lived for a time as a hermit in the Syrian desert, where he learned Hebrew so that he could read the Old Testament in its original language. Pope St. Damasus later made him his secretary and asked him to revise the Latin translation of the Gospels. After the pope died, Jerome settled in Bethlehem, near the place where Jesus was born. There he spent decades translating most of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin. His translation, called the Vulgate, became the Bible of the Western Church for more than a thousand years. Jerome had a sharp temper and a sharp pen, and he knew he needed God’s mercy. He died in Bethlehem in 420. He is a Doctor of the Church, remembered for teaching that ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.