MIRACULOUS MIRACLES™

Saint — Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)

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St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)
October 12, 1891 — August 9, 1942 (gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau)
Co-Patroness of Europe — martyr of Auschwitz
Carmel of Echt (Netherlands — site of her arrest), Netherlands
Feast
August 9
Canonized
October 11, 1998 (by John Paul II)
Beatified
May 1, 1987 (by John Paul II)
✠ MartyrKilled in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau, August 9, 1942 → The Martyrs
Life

Edith Stein was born in Breslau on the great Jewish feast of Yom Kippur 1891, the seventh and youngest child of a deeply observant German Jewish family. She lost her father at one year old; her mother raised her seven children alone, running the family timber business. At her bat mitzvah age (around twelve) she declared herself an atheist and ceased religious practice.

Brilliant in her studies, she became one of the first women to receive a doctorate in philosophy in Germany (1916, under Edmund Husserl), and served as Husserl's research assistant at Freiburg. In 1921 she read the Autobiography of St. Teresa of Ávila straight through in a single night at a friend's home: 'This is the truth!' She was baptised on January 1, 1922.

For eleven years she taught at the Dominican school at Speyer and at the Catholic Educational Institute at Münster, lecturing across Europe on Christian philosophy of woman, education, and the relationship between phenomenology and Thomism. When the Nazi racial laws of 1933 cost her her teaching post, she entered the Carmel of Cologne, taking the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (the Cross was deliberate: she had told the prioress, 'I asked the Lord to be allowed to share his Cross').

In December 1938, after Kristallnacht, she was transferred to the Carmel of Echt in the neutral Netherlands for her safety. After the Nazi occupation of Holland in 1940 the family-of-origin background that had no longer protected her in Germany made her vulnerable in the Netherlands as well. In retaliation for the Dutch Catholic bishops' public condemnation of the Nazi deportations (July 26, 1942), on August 2 the Nazis arrested every Jewish Catholic in the Netherlands. Edith and her sister Rosa (also a Catholic convert living at the Echt Carmel) were among them. They were transported via the Westerbork transit camp to Auschwitz-Birkenau and killed in the gas chambers on August 9, 1942.

Canonised by John Paul II in 1998 (the cause was opened in part because of a 1987 cure of a Massachusetts girl named Benedicta McCarthy of fatal acetaminophen toxicity through Edith's intercession). Declared co-patroness of Europe (with Sts. Catherine of Siena and Bridget of Sweden) on October 1, 1999.

Miracles & Phenomena

  • Cure of Benedicta McCarthy (canonisation miracle)

    March 1987

    A two-year-old American girl named Benedicta McCarthy (named for Sr. Teresa Benedicta) of Massachusetts swallowed a fatal dose of acetaminophen in March 1987. Her family and the local Carmel prayed through Edith Stein's intercession. Her liver and kidneys, which had effectively shut down, returned to full function within days. Accepted as the canonisation miracle in 1998.

  • Letter to Pope Pius XI (1933)

    April 12, 1933

    On April 12, 1933 — only weeks after the first Nazi anti-Jewish laws were promulgated — Edith Stein wrote directly to Pope Pius XI requesting an encyclical against Nazi antisemitism: 'I am a child of the Jewish people who, by the grace of God, for the past eleven years has also been a child of the Catholic Church... and what is happening today against the Jews mocks any sense of justice and humanity.' The letter survives in the Vatican archives.

Relics
  • Object
    Memorial markers and personal items
    Carmel of Cologne; Carmel of Echt; Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial

    Edith Stein has no body — like St. Maximilian Kolbe, her body was destroyed in the Holocaust. Personal items, manuscripts, and habits are preserved at both her Carmels in Cologne and Echt. The Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial includes a plaque at the site of her death.

Iconography
  • Edith Stein in Carmelite Habit with the Star of David

    Often depicted in the brown Carmelite habit with a small yellow Star of David — the symbol of her dual identity as Jewish convert and Carmelite, which she herself never separated. The famous 1939 photograph in the Echt Carmel parlour with her sister Rosa is the basis for most modern devotional images.

Patronages
Europe (co-patroness, declared 1999)Loss of parentsMartyrsConverted JewsWorld Youth Day (along with Sts. Catherine of Siena and Bridget of Sweden)
Sources & Further Reading
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