Born: October 12, 1891

Died: August 9, 1942

Beatified: May 1, 1987

Canonized: October 11, 1998

Patronness: Europe, converts, loss of parents, martyrs

Edith Stein was born as the youngest of 11 children to a Jewish family in Germany. At a young age, she remembers deciding to cease praying. Her mother was tasked with raising the family and running the family business after Edith's father passed away; she was not able to keep the children's faith in God alive.

Edith was very intelligent.  She passed school with high marks and continued onto university where she ultimately earned a doctorate in philosophy.  While she originally attended school for practicality sake, God had different plans for her. Throughout her studies, God kept calling Edith back to him.  She had a mentor whose philosophical musings led her back to belief, unknown witnesses stopping to pray in the Catholic cathedral in the midst of their daily lives, and friends who had converted to Protestantism who showed her what being people of faith truly meant. It was this last example following her time spent as a nurse in the First World War that opened her eyes to Christ.  In her own words later on she wrote: "Things were in God's plan which I had not planned at all. I am coming to the livingf aith and conviction that - from God's point of view - there is no chance and that the whole of my life, down to every detail, has been mapped out in God's divine providence and makes complete and perfect sense in God's all-seeing eyes."

She was baptized and confirmed in 1922, but was held back from entering the Carmelite order right away by her spiritual director's advice.  For the next decade, she taught school, she spoke about women's issues, and ultimately turned back to philosophy and publishing her own works as a service to God. 

When Aryan laws prevented her from teaching any more, the bishop allowed her entrance into the Carmelite Order. She saw in her vocation an opportunity to be a new Queen Esther, taken away from her people to pray for them. As anti-semitism became more apparent, Sr. Teresa Benedita of the Cross wrote a will:  

She was arrested in 1942 with her biological sister Rosa who had also converted and joined the Carmelite Order.  "Come we are going for our people." They were transported to Auschwitz where they were gassed, cremated, and buried in a mass grave on August 9, 1942.

For more details, read the Vatican's profile of her life.