Can't start tomcat7 debug mode on macOS - eclipse

Question

Here is a summary:
Objective: Debug a dynamic web application
Environment: MacOS 10.6.8 / Eclipse Helios 20110218-0911 / Tomcat 7
Error: Failed to connect to remote VM. Connection refused.
Story line:
Doing some research on this matter, I found out that the possible problem to this is that I need to start tomcat7 in debug mode which usually acts on port 8000. The command I'm using is ./catalina.sh jpda start which didn't work (it starts tomcat but doesn't start debug mode). So I tried other things like adding this
variables to the system:
declare -x CATALINA_HOME="/Library/Tomcat"
declare -x JPDA_ADDRESS="8000"
declare -x JPDA_TRANSPORT="dt_socket"
and the problem keeps happening.
this is the return of the command: ./catalina.sh jpda start
Using CATALINA_BASE: /Library/Tomcat
Using CATALINA_HOME: /Library/Tomcat
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /Library/Tomcat/temp
Using JRE_HOME: /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK/Home
Using CLASSPATH: /Library/Tomcat/bin/bootstrap.jar:/Library/Tomcat/bin/tomcat-juli.jar
can anyone help ?
thank you in advance.