Saint Edith Stein: Sr. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

Saint Edith Stein was born on October 12, 1891, in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland). She was the youngest of eleven children in a devout Jewish family. Edith was a bright student who loved learning. As a young woman, she studied philosophy and became one of the first women in Germany to earn a doctorate in phenomenology under the famed philosopher Edmund Husserl.

Although Edith had been raised in the Jewish faith, she stopped practicing her religion for a time and sought truth through her studies. She became an atheist who believed life’s answers could be sought by expanding the intellect through study.

Path to Catholicism

Edith’s path to Catholicism was an intellectual one, influenced by the faith of her colleagues in academia. The definitive moment occurred in 1921, when she read the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Ávila in one night. After finishing the book, Edith said, “This is the truth.” She soon began studying the Catholic faith and was baptized in 1922. She wished to take vows immediately as a Carmelite but was encouraged to wait and thoroughly discern her vocation.

Edith worked as a teacher, writer, and speaker. However, the Nazis began to require proof of Aryan ancestry from civil servants, so she had to leave teaching. Edith continued to write about philosophy, education, and the dignity of every human person. She translated Thomas Aquinas’ De Veritate (Of Truth) into German and studied Catholic philosophy.

Entering the Carmelite

In 1933, Edith entered the Carmelite convent in Cologne and took the name Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. During this time, the Nazi government in Germany stepped up its persecution of the Jewish people. Although Edith had become Catholic, the Nazis still considered her Jewish because of her ancestry. To protect her, her religious superiors moved her to a convent in the Netherlands. However, in July of 1942, the Nazis arrested Edith and her sister Rosa, who had also become Catholic and was a tertiary of the Order.  They were sent to Amersfoort and then to Westerbork.

On August 7, 1942, Edith and Rose, with two hundred and forty-four other baptized Jews, were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in occupied Poland. On August 9, 1942, Edith was sent to the gas chamber. Witnesses spoke of her faith and courage in the camps and her commitment to comforting the traumatized children she found there.

Pope Saint John Paul II canonized her in 1998 and later named her a co-patron saint of Europe of martyrs and those who have lost their parents. Her feast day is celebrated on August 9.

Her feast day is August 9th.

Saint Edith Stein, pray for us!

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