Vatican marks life of Jewish-born saint who died in Auschwitz gas chamber
Beatified as St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross in 1987, the saint was born in 1891 as Edith Stein.
By AARON REICHThe Vatican City is seen on August 5, 2020.(photo credit: REMO CASILLI/ REUTERS)
The Vatican on Sunday marked the life of St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross, a Jewish-born Catholic saint who died in Auschwitz during the Holocaust, the Algemeiner reported.Born Edith Stein on Yom Kippur 1891, the future saint grew up in a Jewish family, as detailed on her profile on the Vatican News website. However, by age 14, she became an atheist.Growing up a Jewish woman in Germany, Stein had aspirations of working in academia, specifically as a philosophy professor, but lost her "unbelief" and converted to Catholicism in 1922 after reading the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila. She eventually entered the Carmelite convent in Cologne.Despite her newfound faith, however, Stein remained involved in issues facing the Jewish people, particularly as the Holocaust began. New measures placed by the Nazi regime in Germany saw her forced to flee, relocating to a convent in Echt, Netherlands.“I had heard of severe measures against Jews before," Stein wrote at the time, according to Vatican News. "But now it dawned on me that… the destiny of these people would also be mine.”After the Nazis conquered the Netherlands, Stein was sent to Auschwitz, where she was killed in the gas chambers in 1942.Over 40 years later, Stein was recognized as a saint, beatified as St. Theresa by Pope John Paul II in 1987.“We bow down before the testimony of the life and death of Edith Stein… a personality who united within her rich life a dramatic synthesis of our century," the pope said at the time."It was the synthesis of a history full of deep wounds… and also the synthesis of the full truth about man.”There has notably been some controversy regarding St. Theresa Benedicta's beatification as a martyr, with some critics arguing that her martyrdom was due to being Jewish by birth, rather than her Catholic faith. In addition, some, such as author Daniel Polish, thought her beatification carried " the tacit message encouraging conversational activities," due to the conjoining of her Catholic faith with the death of Jews in Auschwitz.
According to the official position of the Catholic Church, while her death was due to the Holocaust, St. Theresa Benedicta's martyrdom was also the result of the public condemnation of the Nazis' racist policies by the Dutch episcopacy in 1942. This makes her a martyr due to the teachings of the Church.
