The St. Stephen's Church (; ) is a

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a place/building for Christian religious activities and praying * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian comm ...

Beit Jimal Beit Jimal (or Beit Jamal; ; ), Beit el Jemâl, meaning "The house of the camel"Palmer, 1881, p286/ref> is a Catholic monastery run by Salesians of Don Bosco, Salesian priests and brothers near Beit Shemesh, Israel. The Christian tradition identi ...

, a

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

monastery run by

Salesian The Salesians of Don Bosco (SDB), formally known as the Society of Saint Francis de Sales (), is a religious congregation of men in the Catholic Church, founded in 1859 by the Italian priest John Bosco to help poor and migrant youth during the ...

monks near

Beit Shemesh Beit Shemesh () is a city council (Israel), city located approximately west of Jerusalem in Israel's Jerusalem District. A center of Haredi Judaism and Modern Orthodoxy, Beit Shemesh has a population of 170,683 as of 2024. The city is named afte ...

in present-day

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

. St. Stephen's is under the jurisdiction of the

Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem () is the Latin Catholic ecclesiastical patriarchate in Jerusalem, officially seated in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem is the archbishop of Latin Church Catholics of th ...

(''Patriarchatus Hierosolymitanus Latinorum'') which was established in its modern form in 1847 by

Pope Pius IX Pope Pius IX (; born Giovanni Maria Battista Pietro Pellegrino Isidoro Mastai-Ferretti; 13 May 1792 – 7 February 1878) was head of the Catholic Church from 1846 to 1878. His reign of nearly 32 years is the longest verified of any pope in hist ...

. It was built in 1930 on the ruins of a Byzantine church of the 5th century that had been discovered in 1916. It is dedicated to the first Christian martyr, who was stoned to death in Jerusalem in 34-35 AD (Acts 6–7), and by tradition was first buried at Beit Jimal. One of its stained glass windows bears the inscription "''Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato''", which is Latin meaning "It was also crucified for us under Pontius Pilate". Another inscription, on the roof, says ''"Pater dimitte illis"'', which means "Father, forgive them".

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Beit Jimal 2.JPG, One of the stained glass windows with an inscription in Latin PikiWiki Israel 14222 St. Stephens Church in Jimal.jpg, Description of the Church in English, Hebrew and Arabic Beitgemal3.jpg, Latin inscription on the ceiling Bet dzjamal.JPG, One of the tombs in the temple

References

Roman Catholic churches in Israel Roman Catholic churches completed in 1930 20th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in Israel {{Asia-RC-church-stub

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See also

References