Edith Stein
Saint Edith Stein — Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross — is patroness of converts because hers is one of the great modern conversion stories: a brilliant Jewish philosopher and pupil of Husserl, an atheist in her youth, she was drawn to the faith above all by reading the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Ávila in a single night, was baptized, and at last became a Carmelite nun. For the loss of parents and the orphaned she is invoked because she had lost her own father in childhood and, as a daughter of Israel led to Christ, embraced both her peoples in her heart. Arrested by the Nazis precisely as a Jewish convert and killed at Auschwitz in 1942, she was declared a co-patroness of Europe by Pope John Paul II, and is a patroness of World Youth Day.
Saint Edith Stein, also known as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, was a German Jewish philosopher who converted to Catholicism and became a Carmelite nun. Born in 1891, she was a brilliant student of Edmund Husserl. After her conversion in 1922, she entered the Carmelite Order. She was arrested by the Nazis and killed at Auschwitz in 1942. She is a co-patron of Europe.
