Stained glass window above the entrance to the church depicting the Holy Family and the Three Kings. Made in 1885, author R.V.Gesla.
"The Church of Saint Catherine or Chapel of Saint Catherine is a religious building that is affiliated with the Catholic Church and is located adjacent to the northern part of the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem in the West Bank in the Palestinian territories. It works as a parish church and Franciscan monastery. There is a complex of caves underneath the church.
Is administered by the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, follows the Roman Rite, and is included in the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2012 as part of the "Birthplace of Jesus: Church of the Nativity and the Pilgrimage Route in Bethlehem"." Source: (
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"And who was St Catherine of Alexandria? Though she has been widely venerated in both East and West, there are few reliable facts about her life.
According to the traditional story, this early 4th-century martyr from Egypt was of noble birth and well educated. At the age of 18, she challenged the emperor Maxentius (or his father, the emperor Maximian) for persecuting Christians and worshipping false gods.
The enraged emperor ordered her to be tortured on a wheel — hence the term “Catherine wheel”. But when Catherine touched the wheel, it broke. She was then beheaded and tradition says angels carried her body to Mount Sinai, where in the 6th century a church and monastery were built in her honour.
This latter part of the story was, however, unknown to the earliest pilgrims to the mountain. It was two or three centuries later that the story of St Catherine and the angels began to circulate.
St Catherine of Alexandria has been ranked with St Margaret and St Barbara as one of the 14 “most helpful” saints in heaven. She is also one of the saints reputed to have spoken to St Joan of Arc.
The Bethlehem church dedicated to St Catherine was built in 1882 on the ruins of the Crusader church and monastery belonging to the Augustinians. Beneath the paving of the cloister are the foundations of an earlier monastery, possibly that of St Jerome (whose statue stands on a pedestal in the cloister).
A door in the southwest corner of the cloister leads to a Crusader chapel. The chapel walls are decorated with remnants of Crusader wall paintings, which were partially restored in 1950.
A narrow stairway on the right hand side of the nave leads down into a complex of caves and rock-cut chambers.
These contain a number of chapels. They include the Cave of St Jerome, who translated the Vulgate version of the Bible; St Joseph’s Chapel, recalling the dream in which an angel warned Joseph to take the Holy Family to Egypt; and the Chapel of the Holy Innocents, commemorating the children massacred by Herod." Source: (
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Open: Apr-Sep 6am-7.30pm, Oct-Mar 5.30am-5pm (grottos closed on Sunday mornings)