Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)
A philosopher of Jewish origin and Carmelite nun, killed at Auschwitz in 1942
- Rank
- Saint
- Kind
- Martyr, Religious, Mystic
- Life
- 1891 – 1942
- Era
- 20th century
- Feast
- 9 August
- Countries
- Germany, Poland
Life story
Edith Stein was born on 12 October 1891 in Breslau, then part of Germany and now Wrocław in Poland, into a large Jewish family. She studied philosophy at Göttingen, where she became a pupil of Edmund Husserl, and completed her doctorate at Freiburg in 1916. During the First World War she served for a time as a Red Cross nurse.
After reading the autobiography of Teresa of Avila she asked for baptism and was baptised on 1 January 1922. She taught at Speyer, translated works of Thomas Aquinas, and in 1932 took a lectureship at the Pedagogical Institute of Münster. In 1933, when the Nazi regime issued laws restricting people of Jewish descent, she lost her post.
In the same year she entered the Carmelite convent at Cologne and took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. At the end of 1938 she was transferred to the Carmel at Echt in the Netherlands for greater safety. After the Dutch bishops publicly protested against the persecution of Jews, the Nazis arrested Jewish-born Christians in the Netherlands on 2 August 1942, among them Edith and her sister Rosa.
She was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and died there on 9 August 1942, with many others, at the age of fifty. She was beatified on 1 May 1987 at Cologne and canonised on 11 October 1998; in 1999 John Paul II named her one of the co-patrons of Europe.
Works and witness
- Pupil and assistant of Edmund Husserl; doctorate in 1916
- Baptised on 1 January 1922, then taught at Speyer and Münster
- Entered the Carmelites at Cologne in 1933
- Arrested in the Netherlands on 2 August 1942 and died at Auschwitz-Birkenau
Patron of
Europe (co-patron)
Saints from the same country
References
- Martyrologium Romanum
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints – biographical profile
- Edith Stein, Aus dem Leben einer jüdischen Familie
Written by Anawim from documented history. Some details about ancient saints rest on tradition and are marked as such.