St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross 

(Edith Stein)

"Put all your cares about the future trustingly in God's hand and let yourself be guided by the Lord just like a child.  
Then you can be sure that you won't lose your way."

St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross 

(Edith Stein)
"Put all your cares about the future trustingly in God's hand and let yourself be guided by the Lord 
just like a child.  Then you can be sure that you won't lose your way."

A short biography

Edith was born in 1891. We learn a lot about her early years in Germany from her autobiographical work Life in a Jewish Family. It shows her happiness and the charm and joy of a close-knit family whose bonds enabled them to endure the tragic loss of their father with fortitude.

Edith had a brilliant mind and became the star pupil of the German philosopher Edmund Husserl, founder of phenomenology. Edith’s family were not strongly religious and, as a young adult, she professed herself to be an atheist. However, the search for truth which led her to study philosophy eventually brought her to the Catholic Church. The chance reading of the Life of Teresa of Avila in one sitting prompted her to assert: “This is the truth.” That very day she requested instruction in the Catholic faith and was baptised on 1st January 1922. She eventually entered Cologne Carmel and kept up her writing.

The Nazi persecution of the Jews which had hounded and limited her professional career prompted her to move to Echt Carmel, Holland in 1939. From there the Order planned to send her to Switzerland but permission came too late. Prescient of the impending catastrophe, Edith offered herself to God on behalf of the Jewish people. When the Catholic Bishops of Holland spoke out against the evils of Nazism, the swift and cruel response was to round up all Jewish converts to Christianity and transport them to Auschwitz. Edith and her sister Rosa, also a convert, died there in a gas chamber probably on 8th August 1942.  

A short biography

Edith was born in 1891. We learn a lot about her early years in Germany from her autobiographical work Life in a Jewish Family. It shows her happiness and the charm and joy of a close-knit family whose bonds enabled them to endure the tragic loss of their father with fortitude.

Edith had a brilliant mind and became the star pupil of the German philosopher Edmund Husserl, founder of phenomenology. Edith’s family were not strongly religious and, as a young adult, she professed herself to be an atheist. However, the search for truth which led her to study philosophy eventually brought her to the Catholic Church. The chance reading of the Life of Teresa of Avila in one sitting prompted her to assert: “This is the truth.” That very day she requested instruction in the Catholic faith and was baptised on 1st January 1922. She eventually entered Cologne Carmel and kept up her writing.

“The limitless loving devotion to God, and the gift God makes of Himself to you, are the highest elevation of which the heart is capable; it is the highest degree of prayer. The souls that have reached this point are truly the heart of the Church.”



“Every true prayer is a prayer of the Church; by means of that prayer the Church prays, since it is the Holy Spirit living in the Church, Who in every single soul ‘prays in us with unspeakable groanings’.”

Patron of Europe

Edith, who wrote widely, is considered one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. Among the most famous of her works is 'The Science of the Cross'. Sr Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was beatified in 1987, canonised in 1998 and is one of the six patrons of Europe. Her feast day is 9th August.
"God is truth. Those who seek truth, seek God - whether they know it or not."