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The saints

St. Jerome Emiliani

A careless soldier who found God in a prison cell and spent his life on orphans.

Feast: 8 February · 1486 to 1537 · Reformation and missions · Venice and Somasca, Italy

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Painting of St. Jerome Emiliani looking upward, his arm around a young boy.

Didier Descouens, 2019. Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.

Home / The saints / St. Jerome Emiliani

Castelnuovo, near Venice, 1511

Jerome was a Venetian officer who lived for himself, by his own later account.1

He was captured in battle and chained in a dungeon.1

In that cell he prayed to Mary, and after his release he gave his life to God.

Patron of orphans and abandoned children1

01St. Jerome Emiliani

Fathers to orphans

After plague and famine swept northern Italy, he took in orphans, fed them and taught them.1

He founded the Somascan Fathers to care for orphans, and died caring for the sick in an epidemic.1

Live it this week

Support a child without parents

Jerome fathered other people’s children. This week, give real money or time to a foster care agency, orphanage or children’s home, or find out what your diocese’s foster programs need.

Notes

How we know · 1 source for this page
  1. Franciscan Media, Saint of the Day: “Saint Jerome Emiliani”. franciscanmedia.org. franciscanmedia.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.