Bearing Witness: Cornerstone of the New Evangelization
The New Evangelization is all about testimony. Each is called to be a witness i...
Saint Jerome was born around 342 AD in a town on the Eastern Adriatic coast, in the imperial territory the Romans called Dalmatia. He studied in Rome, where he was baptized, and eventually became a monk. St. Jerome learnt Hebrew while spending a few years in Syria as a hermit. After His ordination to the priesthood, he traveled to Rome where he served as the secretary of Pope Damasus from 382-385. After the Pope’s death, he settled in Bethlehem where he founded a monastery and dedicated himself to study and the translation of the Scriptures from the original languages into Latin. St. Jerome’s translation, known as the Vulgate, was used in the Latin rite of the Catholic Church for over 1,000 years.
The biblical scholarship of St. Jerome was extraordinary, and he remains one of the greatest Scripture scholars, Fathers, and Doctors of the Catholic Church. He died ten years before St. Augustine, in 420 AD. For a more extensive biography of Jerome, see When the Church was Young: Voices of the Early Fathers by Marcellino D'Ambrosio (Dr. Italy).