St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was a
German-Jewish philosopher, nun, a martyr and a highly unusual saint of the
Catholic Church. Born into an observant Jewish family in Breslau, a German
province of Prussia on October 12, 1891, she was named Edith and her family
name was Stein. Edith was a very gifted child who enjoyed learning. She greatly
admired her mother's strong faith; however, by her teenage years Stein had
become an atheist. In 1916, she received a doctorate of philosophy from
the University of Göttingen, and soon afterwards became a member of the faculty
in Freiburg. While Stein had earlier contacts with Catholicism, it was
her reading of the autobiography of the mystic St. Teresa of Ávila on a holiday
in Göttingen in 1921 that caused her conversion. She was eventually baptized on
January 1, 1922, gave up her job at Freiburg and started to teach at a
Dominican girls' school in Speyer from 1922 to 1932.
In a letter to Pope Pius XI, she denounced the Nazi regime
and asked the Pope to openly denounce the regime "to put a stop to this
abuse of Christ's name.” Although she never received an answer, in 1937, Pope
Pius XI issued an encyclical written in German, "Mit Brennender
Sorge," in which he criticized Nazism, and condemned anti-semitism.
I’m sure her letter had some influence on this. She entered the Discalced Carmelite monastery Our Lady of
Peace at Cologne in 1933 and took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.
Although she moved from Germany to the Netherlands to avoid Nazi persecution,
in 1942 she was not safe there. The Dutch Bishops had a public statement read
in all the churches of the country in July 1942, condemning Nazi racism. In a
retaliatory response a few weeks later, the Reichskomissar ordered the arrest
of all Jewish converts, who had previously been spared. Sr. Teresa Benedicta
and her sister Rosa, also a convert, were captured and shipped to the Auschwitz
concentration camp, where they were gassed on August 9, 1942 when Edith was
only 50. Edith Stein was canonized as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross by
Pope John Paul II in 1998; however, she is also often referred to as
"Saint Edith Stein".
Wednesday 9 August 2023
St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
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