1891-1942
Feast Day: August 9
Saint Edith Stein was born on Yom Kippur, October 12, 1891. She was the 11th child in a devout Jewish family. As a young child, Edith’s family lived across the street from a Roman Catholic church. She would listen on Sundays as the bells would toll and she watched the people as they went to Mass. When Edith was a teenager, she became an atheist. She went on to college and became a professor and teacher of philosophy. She achieved remarkable success in her field; she was a profound “thinker” and she was always searching for answers.

A turning point in her life is when she picked up a book about St. Teresa of Avila. Edith was always searching for “truth” and she found it in the Roman Catholic Church. Edith was baptized at 30 years old in the Cathedral Church in Cologne, Germany. At 42, she took the name Sister Teresa Benedicta the Cross. Eventually, she was moved to Holland for safety during World War II; however, she was captured and sent to the gas chambers of Auschwitz when she was 51 years old. At St. Edith Stein, we often recall the words that she left behind for her Mother Superior that were scribbled on a scrap of paper and thrown from the train to Auschwitz: “Ave Crux, Spec Unica” which translates to “Hail Cross, Our Only Hope.” Pope John Paul II beatified Teresa Benedicta in 1987 and canonized her in 1998.