Raised as a Jew, Stein was an atheist philosopher who converted to Catholicism in 1921 when she was 30. She became a Discalced Carmelite nun in 1938 and took the name Sr Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

Pope John Paul II declared her a martyr in 1987 and canonised her in 1998. St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross is the co-patroness of Europe.

On Tuesday - her anniversary - Cardinal Michael Czerny joined with her Carmelite sisters and celebrated a Mass for St Teresa Benedicta near Auschwitz.

Like her, members of Czerny's family were also arrested and sent to concentration camps. Some were sent to Auschwitz.

Czerny's homily recounted St Teresa Benedicta's story and how it intersected with his maternal Czechoslovak family.

"With Edith Stein, I share Jewish origins, the Catholic faith and a vocation to religious life ..." he said.

Even when she considered herself an atheist, "her sensitive moral conscience and intellectual honesty led her to reject relativism and subjectivism".

Stein wrote that her "first encounter with the Cross" took place in 1917.

She was visiting a recently widowed friend who told her about her late husband's conversion and her own.

The friend explained that the peace she received at her baptism prevailed even during this time of loss.

Stein "was struck by the serenity that the woman maintained in spite of tragedy," Czerny said.

"No human force could account for or explain such peace," Stein later wrote.

"It was the moment when the light of Christ, Christ on the cross, shone."

In 1933, Stein wrote to Pope Pius XI urging him to speak out against all expressions of antisemitism.

It wasn't until 1998 the Church formally apologised for not taking more decisive action to challenge Nazism and the so-called ‘final solution' to the ‘Jewish problem'.

By the end of the war, Czerny's family was scattered or dead.

His grandmother and her children were considered Jewish as his grandmother was of Jewish descent. His grandfather refused to divorce his Jewish wife, so he was arrested too.

Both her grandmother and two uncles spent time at Auschwitz before being transferred elsewhere. Only his grandfather and mother survived.

Source

• America Magazine
• AP News

And there, in the avoidance of religious truth and its call to love and mercy, Edith found peace and consolation — a peace that would sustain her all the way to Auschwitz.

As Pope Francis calls believers to the peripheries, he has stressed that such places of obscurity are not only geographical locations.

While the pope avoids any misplaced hyper-spiritualization of the actual physical fringes of society, he does comfortably broaden the term to include an existential dimension.

And so, the peripheries are not only localities in the world, but can also be dimensions within the human heart.

This reality is exemplified in the life, conversion, and martyrdom of the great St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, whose birth name was Edith Stein.

The Catholic Church celebrated the saint's feast day this past week. The holy day was an occasion to recount Edith Stein's story, and to be inspired by her witness to truth and charity.

Edith was born into a large Jewish family in 1891. When she was a young child, her father died and her mother refused to re-marry.

Instead, her mother worked as a single parent, which was uncommon at the time, and provided for the family through unrelenting determination and hard work.

This example of independence and tenacity greatly influenced Edith throughout her life.

Edith was very attentive to her studies, and was regularly noted for her brilliance.

As a young woman, Edith could not intellectually find reasons to believe in God, and such beliefs became a periphery in her heart.

She became an ardent atheist but studied philosophy because she wanted to understand the mysteries and intrigue of life.

During World War I, Edith served as a nurse and this experience led her to deeper reflections on sacrifice, suffering, misery, and hope. Continue reading

Sources

• Crux article by Father Jeffrey F. Kirby, a Crux contributor.
• Image: The Tabard Theatre Company