Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

Edith Stein was born into a devout Jewish family in Breslau, then in Germany, on October 12, 1891, the Day of Atonement. As a young woman she lost her faith and devoted herself to philosophy, earning her doctorate in 1916 under Edmund Husserl. In 1921 she read the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Ávila in a single night and recognized the truth she had been seeking. She was baptized on January 1, 1922.

When Nazi laws barred her from teaching, she entered the Carmel of Cologne in 1933, taking the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. In 1938 she was moved for safety to the Carmel of Echt in the Netherlands. After the Dutch bishops protested the deportations, the Nazis arrested Catholics of Jewish origin, including Edith and her sister Rosa, on August 2, 1942. They died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz on August 9, 1942. Saint John Paul II canonized her in 1998 and in 1999 named her a co-patroness of Europe.

Carmelite communities honor her with Masses and evenings of prayer and reflection on her writings, especially The Science of the Cross.

Her feast is also a day to remember the victims of the Holocaust and to pray for friendship between Catholics and Jews.