St. Edith Stein

Born: October 12, 1891

Died: August 9, 1942

Feast day: August 9

Patron saint of: Europe

Edith Stein was born to Jewish parents on October 12, 1891—Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement—in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland). At 14 she simply “stopped praying,” and it would be years before she came to grips with her need for God. Stein’s inner struggles continued until 1921, when she happened upon the autobiography of St. Teresa of Ávila during a visit with her friend, Hedwig Conrad-Martius. Her immediate response was to buy a prayer book and a catechism.

Approaching a parish priest, she asked for baptism, only to be met with hesitation. Stein then requested the priest test her, and she was baptized on January 1, 1922.

Soon after, she wanted to enter religious life, but she chose to put her plans on hold due to her mother’s painful reaction to her conversion. She continued writing and speaking on philosophy until 1933, when Hitler’s laws prevented Jews from teaching. Stein saw this as her opportunity to enter the cloistered Carmelite convent in Cologne, taking the religious name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

In 1938 Stein was sent to a convent in Echt, Netherlands due to the increasing danger in Germany. She was not safe even there, as the Nazis soon occupied the country. The Germans responded to a Dutch bishops’ letter condemning anti-Jewish measures by arresting of a large group of Jewish Catholics—including Stein and her sister Rosa—who were taken to Auschwitz. They both died there on August 9, 1942.

—Sister Lou Ella Hickman, I.W.B.S.