ST. TERESA BENEDICTA OF THE CROSS (Edith Stein) was born in 1891 in Breslau, which was then a part of the German Empire. Today the city is known as Wroclaw, Poland. Edith’s family members were very devout Jews, but Edith herself had no interest in religion and abandoned Judaism in her early teens. She says of herself: “During my early years I was mercurially lively, always in motion, spilling over with pranks, impertinent and precocious, and at the same time intractably stubborn and angry if anything went against my will.” An over-achiever gifted with a brilliant intellect, she earned a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Gottinngen in 1916. One evening, at the home of some Christian friends, she picked up the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila. Fascinated, she read the entire volume in one sitting. Closing the book, she declared: “This is the truth.” The next day, she bought a catechism and began to study the Catholic faith. She was baptized in 1922 and started teaching at a Dominican girls’ school in Speyer. She then was appointed a lecturer at the Educational Institute of Munich but was forced to resign her position under pressure of the Nazi government. In 1933, Edith entered the Carmel of Cologne and took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

In an attempt to keep her safe from Nazi persecution of the Jews, she was sent with her sister, Rosa, from Cologne to the Carmelite monastery in Echt, Netherlands in 1938. However, the Nazis conquered Holland in 1942, and, in retaliation for the Dutch bishops’ denouncement of their racism, they arrested all Dutch Jews who had become Christians. St. Teresa Benedicta and Rosa were deported to Auschwitz and died in a gas chamber on August 9, 1942.

The writings of St. Teresa Benedicta fill 17 volumes, many of which have been translated into English. She was a woman of integrity, who followed the truth wherever it led her. St. John Paul II wrote of her: “This woman had to face the challenges of such a radically changing century as our own.” He canonized her in 1999.  Her feast is celebrated on August 9.