Gabriele Allegra

Entering the Order and Ordination

Gabriele Maria Allegra was born in 1907 in San Giovanni la Punta, Sicily, Italy. At 15 he entered a Franciscan seminary, and in 1930 he was ordained a priest. In 1928, while he was studying in Rome, the six-hundredth anniversary of the death of John of Montecorvino, the Franciscan who had come to China in the Yuan dynasty, was commemorated. Deeply moved, he resolved to translate the entire Bible from the original languages into Chinese.

Translating in Hengyang

In 1931 the Franciscans sent him to the Diocese of Hengyang in Hunan, China, to study Chinese and local church work. In April 1935 he began translating the Bible single-handedly in Hengyang, and in November 1944 he finished the first draft of the Old Testament. In 1945, after victory in the War of Resistance against Japan, he founded the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum Sinense at the Franciscan residence at the White Pagoda Temple (Baita Si) in Beijing, gathering Chinese and foreign priests and scholars, and served as its director.

The Studium Biblicum Bible

In 1948, as the political situation changed, the Studium moved to Hong Kong to continue its work. Over 20 years he directed the translation of the entire Old and New Testaments, supplying detailed introductions, footnotes, maps, glossaries and archaeological material on the Holy Land. On Christmas Eve 1968 the Studium Biblicum published the one-volume Bible (the Studium Biblicum Bible, or Sigao Bible), the first official Catholic Chinese Bible translated directly from the original Hebrew and Greek. It formally replaced the older versions translated from Latin and became the standard translation in general use in the Chinese-speaking Catholic Church.

Death and Beatification

Allegra served in Hong Kong for many years. He died of illness in Hong Kong in 1976 and was buried in the Catholic Cemetery at Happy Valley. In 2012, during the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI, he was beatified (Beato Gabriele Allegra) and is called the "Father of the Chinese Bible".