Home
 Europa 1996: Famous Women Edith Stein (Scott 1010) August 9 is the memorial for Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, who was born Edith Stein in 1891. The stamp above was issued thirty years ago, in 1996, as part of a two-stamp set for the annual Europa program. The second stamp honored Saint Gianna Beretta Molla. Edith Stein was born into a German Jewish family in Breslau, Germany. Her family was observant of the Jewish faith, but Edith became an agnostic as a teenager. During the early years of World War I, she become a nursing assistant and worked in an infectious diseases hospital. During this time she began to read into the life of Saint Teresa of Avila, the reformer of the Carmelite Order, and was drawn to the Catholic faith. She was baptized on January 1, 1922. She would enter the Carmelite Order in 1934, and made her final vows in 1938, taking the name Teresa Benedicta a Cruce (of the Cross) after Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint Benedict of Norcia. She would become well known as a writer and intellectual. Among her writings is The Science of the Cross, an examination of the writings of Saint John of the Cross. As the Nazi threat spread in Germany, later in 1938 both Teresa Benedicta a Cruce and her sister Rosa (also a Catholic convert and a tertiary of the Carmelite order), left the country and were sent to the Carmelite monastery in Echt, Netherlands. In 1942, in response to a pastoral letter from the Dutch bishops which focused on the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis, baptized Catholics of Jewish origin in Holland were rounded up by the Gestapo on Sunday, August 2. They were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp and exterminated on August 9, 1942. Teresa and her sister Rosa were among the reported 947 Jewish Catholics martyred in a mass gas chamber. A dispute arose as to whether she was martyred for her faith or because of her Jewish heritage. The Church holds that she died because the Dutch hierarchy condemned Nazi racism in 1942, and therefore she died because of Church moral teaching, thereby declaring her a martyr. As a result of this determination, and the miraculous cure of a girl in Massachusetts, Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was beatified on May 1, 1987 in Cologne, Germany, and then canonized 11 years later on October 11, 1998, in Rome, both by Pope John Paul II. In addition, Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross is one of the six patron saints of Europe, together with Saints Benedict of Nursia, Cyril and Methodius, Bridget of Sweden, and Catherine of Siena. Edith Stein/Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross has been venerated around the world and across cultures and faiths. Numerous schools and buildings bear her name. In addition to the Vatican City stamp shown above, she was also honored on a stamp issued by Germany in 1988, along with fellow religious Father Rupert Mayer, celebrating their beatifications in 1987.  Beatification of Edith Stein and Rupert Mayer Germany, Michel 1352 (1988) From Wikimedia Commons, in the Public Domain REFERENCES: |
