Onced ordained, he vowed to emulate the life of St. Francis of Assis and lived briefly as a tramp in 1908. He came to the Bahamas and travelled throughout the islands rebuilding churches destroyed by a hurricane utilizing thick stone and Roman arches. Hawes offended local sensibilities. However while preaching on Harbour Island, he asked the congregation why the Whites were sitting in the front and the Blacks at the back, when all men are equal. “The congregation nearly fainted with shock and I was rushed out of the church as quickly as possible.” Hawes recorded.
Between bouts of preaching, the eccentric Englishman did duty as amule-driver in Canada, a fox-terrier breeder, a cow-puncher and a sailor in 1211 he converted to Catholicism and studied in Rome for the priesthood before moving to Austrailia to serve as a gold-rush bush priest. He stayed there for 24 years and built a renowned reputation until suffereing a heart attack.
In 1939 Hawes returned to the Bahamas, washing ashore on Cat Island to live as a hermit. The following year, he began work on his hermitage atop Como Hill which he renamed Mt. Alvernia ater the site in Tuscany where St. Francis received the wounds of the cross. Meanwhile, like a good hermit, he lived in a cave amid snakes, trantulas, and crabs and took unto himself the name Father Jerome.
On weekdays Jerome meditated alone (he also read newspapers, painted, drew cartoon, and wrote essays with a George Bernarrd), on weekends he worked in the village. He build four churches on Cat Island, as well as a medical clinic, convent monastery, technical school, and other projects throughout the Bahamas all featuring his trademark medievalist architectural motif. His buildings were made of rock quarried on site, with nothing that could rot or rust away.
Undoubtedly, locals considered him a saintly figure. He strolled around barefoot and lavished charity on the islanders, many of whom climbed the steps of his monastery to ask for money (during this period most Cat Islanders were incredibly poor, described by Father Jerome as in a state verging on destitution). None were denied, and at other times, as during drought, the charity flowed uphill. Jerome became the conscience of the Island, actiing as a salve to settle desputes. Locals of all denominations attended his sermons, although apparently he converted only five people to Catholicism, as the locals resisted his strictures against extracurricular sex. He died in 1956 and was buried, per his request, barefoot and without a casket in the cave that had once been his home.