St. Jerome: Feast Day, Patronage & Prayers
Updated: Oct 3
Feast day: September 30 (Memorial of St. Jerome, Priest and Doctor of the Church)
Patron of: Librarians, translators, scholars, and students of Scripture.
About St. Jerome
St. Jerome was born around 347 in Stridon, near the Adriatic coast, and studied in Rome, where he was baptized. After years of study and a period as a hermit in the Syrian desert, where he learned Hebrew, he was ordained a priest and became secretary to Pope St. Damasus. At the pope's request, he revised the Latin translation of the Gospels.
Jerome later settled in Bethlehem, near the place of Christ's birth, where he lived in a monastery for more than thirty years, founded with the help of the Roman noblewoman St. Paula. There he translated most of the Old Testament directly from the Hebrew. His work became the heart of the Vulgate, the Latin Bible used by the Western Church for well over a thousand years. He also wrote many commentaries and letters. Jerome was brilliant, blunt, and famously short-tempered, and he knew it and did penance for it. His most quoted line is a lasting call to read the Bible: "Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ." He died in Bethlehem in 420 and is one of the four great Latin Doctors of the Church.
Prayers to St. Jerome on Daily Catholic Prayers
Browse every saint in our Catalog of Saints A–Z.
Comments