Pope St. Damasus I

Pope from 366 until his death, Damasus commissioned his secretary Jerome to make the Latin translation of the Bible we know as the Vulgate, organized the Roman archives, restored and decorated the catacombs, and composed the elegant inscriptions still seen there today. He also confirmed the canon of Scripture at the Roman synod of 382.

His election was contested and even violent — a painful beginning that Damasus overcame through decades of quiet, decisive governance. A lover of the martyrs, he searched out their forgotten tombs beneath the city and adorned them with marble inscriptions in a distinctive calligraphic script, making the catacombs pilgrimage sites that drew the faithful from across the empire.

Damasus died in 384 at nearly eighty, having given the Western Church its authoritative Bible, its clearest early statement on the canon, and a renewed devotion to the witnesses of the faith buried beneath Rome's streets. His papacy bridged the age of persecution and the age of Christendom.