Paul the Apostle

Saul of Tarsus was a Pharisee of the tribe of Benjamin, educated in Jerusalem under Gamaliel — the most eminent teacher of the law of his generation. He was present at the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, and consented to his death (Acts 7:58, 8:1). He then actively persecuted the early Church, entering houses and dragging out men and women to prison (Acts 8:3).

His encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus (c. AD 34–36) — “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” — was not a gradual conversion but a sudden overwhelming encounter. Struck blind, he was baptised by Ananias in Damascus and received back his sight. After a period of retreat in Arabia and Damascus, he began the missionary journeys that would take the Gospel across Asia Minor, Greece, and eventually to Rome itself.

Paul made three great missionary journeys (c. AD 46–57), establishing churches at Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Ephesus, and throughout Galatia and Asia Minor. He was arrested in Jerusalem when he returned with the collection for the poor, appealed to Caesar as a Roman citizen, and was transported to Rome where he awaited trial under house arrest. According to consistent early tradition — Clement of Rome, the Muratorian Fragment, Eusebius — he was released, continued his mission possibly to Spain, was re-arrested, and was beheaded on the Via Ostiense outside Rome under Nero around AD 67. He is buried in the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls.

Benedict XVI wrote of Paul: “He is certainly the figure who, after Jesus, marked the history of Christianity most deeply. Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew from Galilee… Paul was a Jew of the Diaspora… He was thus predisposed by his very origin to play a decisive role in the great debate about the possibility for pagans to be admitted to the Christian community.”