catholic-bible

Provides an API for scraping the USCCB Bible website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, returning structured verse data in both English and Spanish.

About catholic-bible

This package facilitates pulling books, chapters, and individual verses from the Catholic Bible. Please open new issues for any bugs you find — support is greatly appreciated! If you have a new feature, feel free to open a pull request.

Installation

To install catholic-bible from PyPI:

$ pip install catholic-bible

To install from source as editable:

$ pip install -e .

API Usage

Fetch a single chapter

import asyncio
from catholic_bible import USCCB, models

async def main() -> None:
    async with USCCB() as usccb:
        chapter = await usccb.get_chapter("genesis", 1)
        if chapter:
            print(chapter.title)          # "Genesis, Chapter 1"
            print(chapter.url)
            for section in chapter.sections:
                if section.heading:
                    print(section.heading)
                for verse in section.verses:
                    print(verse)          # "1[a] In the beginning..."

asyncio.run(main())

Fetch a single verse

import asyncio
from catholic_bible import USCCB, models

async def main() -> None:
    async with USCCB() as usccb:
        verse = await usccb.get_verse("john", 3, 16)
        if verse:
            print(verse.text)

asyncio.run(main())

Fetch all chapters of a book

import asyncio
from catholic_bible import USCCB, models

async def main() -> None:
    async with USCCB() as usccb:
        chapters = await usccb.get_book("psalms")
    for chapter in chapters:
        print(chapter.title)

asyncio.run(main())

Save chapters to JSON

import asyncio
import json
from pathlib import Path
from catholic_bible import USCCB, models

async def main() -> None:
    async with USCCB() as usccb:
        chapters = await usccb.get_book("genesis")
    out = Path("genesis")
    out.mkdir(exist_ok=True)
    for chapter in chapters:
        (out / f"chapter-{chapter.number:04d}.json").write_text(
            json.dumps(chapter.to_dict(), ensure_ascii=False, indent=2)
        )

asyncio.run(main())

Fetch in Spanish

Pass language=models.Language.SPANISH to any method:

import asyncio
from catholic_bible import USCCB, models

async def main() -> None:
    async with USCCB() as usccb:
        chapter = await usccb.get_chapter("genesis", 1, language=models.Language.SPANISH)
        if chapter:
            print(chapter)

asyncio.run(main())

Browse the book catalogue

from catholic_bible import constants

# Attribute access
print(constants.OLD_TESTAMENT_BOOKS.Genesis.num_chapters)   # 50
print(constants.NEW_TESTAMENT_BOOKS.Matthew.name)           # "Matthew"
print(constants.NEW_TESTAMENT_BOOKS.Corinthians1.name)      # "1 Corinthians"

# All 73 books in canonical order
for book in constants.ALL_BOOKS:
    print(book.name, book.num_chapters)

# Lookup by URL name
genesis = constants.BIBLE_BOOKS["genesis"]
print(genesis.short_abbreviation)  # "Gn"
print(genesis.long_abbreviation)   # "Gen"

Book lookup utilities

Books can be looked up by full name, URL name, or abbreviation (case-insensitive):

from catholic_bible.utils import lookup_book, book_url_name

book = lookup_book("Gen")          # long abbreviation
book = lookup_book("Gn")           # short abbreviation
book = lookup_book("genesis")      # URL name (lowercase, no spaces)
book = lookup_book("Genesis")      # full display name
book = lookup_book("Song of Songs")

print(book_url_name(book))         # "songofsongs"

CLI Usage

# List all 73 books
python -m catholic_bible list-books

# List only Old Testament books
python -m catholic_bible list-books --testament old

# List only New Testament books
python -m catholic_bible list-books --testament new

# Fetch a chapter and print to stdout
python -m catholic_bible get-chapter --book genesis --chapter 1

# Fetch a chapter and save to JSON
python -m catholic_bible get-chapter --book genesis --chapter 1 --save genesis-1.json

# Fetch a single verse
python -m catholic_bible get-verse --book john --chapter 3 --verse 16

# Fetch an entire book (all chapters)
python -m catholic_bible get-book --book psalms

# Save all chapters of a book to a directory
python -m catholic_bible get-book --book genesis --save-dir ./genesis/

# Fetch in Spanish
python -m catholic_bible get-chapter --book genesis --chapter 1 --language SPANISH
python -m catholic_bible get-book --book genesis --language SPANISH --save-dir ./genesis-es/

Key Types

Type	Description
USCCB	Async client — use as an async context manager
BibleChapter	A parsed chapter with book, number, language, url, title, sections
BibleSection	A named section within a chapter (heading, verses)
BibleVerse	A single verse (number, text, footnote_refs)
Language	Language.ENGLISH or Language.SPANISH
BibleBookInfo	Book metadata (name, title, short_abbreviation, long_abbreviation, num_chapters)

Documentation

The documentation for catholic-bible can be found here or in the project’s docstrings.

Development

Setup Python Environment

uv install
uvx pre-commit install

Re-lock dependencies

uv lock

Run code

uv run python -m catholic_bible

Generating test fixtures

# Fetch and save a chapter for use as a test fixture
python -m catholic_bible get-chapter --book genesis --chapter 1 --save tests/data/genesis-chapter-1.json

Run tests

uv run pytest

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