Saint Teresa Benedicta

In his homily at the canonization Mass of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Pope John Paul II said:

“Because she was Jewish, Edith Stein was taken with her sister Rosa and many other Catholics and Jews to the concentration camp in Auschwitz, where she died with them in the gas chambers. Today we remember them all with deep respect. A few days before her deportation, the woman religious had dismissed the question about a possible rescue: ‘Do not do it! Why should I be spared? Is it not right that I should gain no advantage from my Baptism? If I cannot share the lot of my brothers and sisters, my life, in a certain sense, is destroyed.’”

The witness of this woman is poignant.