Edith Stein

Who they were

Edith Stein was born at Breslau in 1891, the eleventh child of a devout Jewish family. Brilliant and rationalist, she gave up religion as a young woman, nursed soldiers for the Red Cross in the First World War, and became assistant to the philosopher Husserl at Freiburg. Phenomenology, Max Scheler, the Spiritual Exercises and above all the life of St Teresa of Ávila led her to Christ; she was baptised in 1922 against her parents' wishes, without ever renouncing her Jewish roots.

A teacher and writer, she entered the Carmel of Cologne in 1934 as Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, and offered her suffering for her people. After Kristallnacht she was moved to the Carmel of Echt in the Netherlands. In 1942, in reprisal for the Dutch bishops' public protest against the persecution, she was seized with 244 other Catholic Jews and taken to Auschwitz. There she cared for the children, and saying to her sister Rosa, 'Come, let us go for our people', died in the gas chamber of Birkenau on 9 August 1942.

The miracles

She was beatified as a martyr. St John Paul II declared her co-patron of Europe in 1999. The miracle approved for her canonisation is not described in the sources we have used.

Why that counted as sanctity

Edith Stein sought the truth with her whole mind and found it in Christ, then embraced the cross with her people - 'Ave Crux, spes unica' - offering her life for peace.

Connected on this site

• Benedict of Nursia Saint
  “Edith Stein was admitted as a student to the study of religion to the Discalced Carmelite monastery in Cologne on 25 November, on the first vespers of the feast of Saint Teresa of Ávila, and received the religious habit as a novice in April 1934, taking the religious name Teresia Benedicta a Cruce (Teresia in…” — Wikipedia
• Teresa of Ávila Saint
  “From reading the life of the reformer of the Carmelites, Teresa of Ávila, Stein was drawn to the Christian faith.” — Wikipedia