ll grotto located directly under the main altar of the church.
In its small apse a silver star marks the place of Jesus' birth.
St. Catherine's Next door to the Church of the Nativity is the Roman Catholic church of St. Catherine. It was built by the Franciscans in 1881 over a cave where, tradition says, St. Jerome lived when he was translating the scriptures from the Greek Septuagint to the Latin Vulgate in the 4th century. A statue of him can be seen in the courtyard, once part of a Crusader cloistered convent, outside. St. Catherine's is where Christmas Midnight Mass is celebrated and relayed throughout the world via satellite.