At that point, she wanted to become a Discalced Carmelite nun but was dissuaded by her spiritual mentor, the archabbot of Beuron, Raphael Walzer OSB.

Edith Stein was admitted as a student to the study of religion to the Discalced Carmelite monastery in Cologne on 25 November, on the first vespers of the feast of Saint Teresa of Ávila, and received the religious habit as a novice in April 1934, taking the religious name Teresia Benedicta a Cruce (Teresia in remembrance of Teresa of Ávila, Benedicta in honour of Benedict of Nursia).

In response to the pastoral letter from the Dutch bishops on 26 July 1942, in which they made the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis a central theme, all baptized Catholics of Jewish origin (according to police reports, 244 people) were arrested by the Gestapo on the following Sunday, 2 August 1942.

She was the youngest of 11 children and was born on Yom Kippur, that important Jewish festival of the Hebrew calendar; these facts combined to make her a favorite of her mother.

Though her father died while she was young, her widowed mother was determined to give her children a thorough education and consequently sent Edith to study at the Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Breslau.

[12] Her dissertation entitled Das Einfühlungsproblem in seiner historischen Entwicklung und in phänomenologischer Betrachtung[13] (The Empathy Problem as it Developed Historically and Considered Phenomenologically)[14][a] was awarded a doctorate in philosophy with the summa cum laude honor.

[18] While Stein had earlier contacts with Catholicism, it was her reading of the autobiography of the mystic Teresa of Ávila during summer holidays in Bad Bergzabern in 1921 that prompted her conversion and eventually the desire to seek the life of a Discalced Carmelite.

While there, Stein translated Thomas Aquinas' De Veritate (Of Truth) into German, familiarized herself with Catholic philosophy in general and tried to bridge the phenomenology of her former teacher, Husserl, to Thomism.

In 1932 she became a lecturer at the Catholic Church-affiliated Institute for Scientific Pedagogy in Münster, but antisemitic legislation passed by the Nazi government forced her to resign the post in 1933.

In Cologne she wrote her metaphysical book Endliches und ewiges Sein (Finite and Eternal Being), which attempted to combine the philosophies of Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and Husserl.

In her testament of 9 June 1939[21] she wrote: I beg the Lord to take my life and my death … for all concerns of the sacred hearts of Jesus and Mary and the holy church, especially for the preservation of our holy order, in particular the Carmelite monasteries of Cologne and Echt, as atonement for the unbelief of the Jewish People, and that the Lord will be received by his own people and his kingdom shall come in glory, for the salvation of Germany and the peace of the world, at last for my loved ones, living or dead, and for all God gave to me: that none of them shall go astray.Stein's move to Echt prompted her to be more devout and even more observant of the Carmelite rule.

Her fellow sisters would later recount how Stein began "quietly training herself for life in a concentration camp, by enduring cold and hunger" after the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940.

In a retaliatory response on 26 July 1942 the Reichskommissar of the Netherlands, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, ordered the arrest of all Jewish converts who had previously been spared.

Stein vehemently refused his assistance, stating: "If somebody intervened at this point and took away [her] chance to share in the fate of [her] brothers and sisters, that would be utter annihilation.

Her first literal assignment in Carmel was to prepare Potency and Act for publication, a task she accomplished by writing a new book: Finite and Eternal Being – An Ascent to the Meaning of Being.

Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was beatified as a martyr on 1 May 1987 in Cologne, Germany, by Pope John Paul II and then canonized by him 11 years later on 11 October 1998 in Rome.

The miracle that was the basis for her canonization is the cure of Benedicta McCarthy, a little girl who had swallowed a large amount of paracetamol (acetaminophen), which causes hepatic necrosis.

The young girl's father, Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, a priest of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, immediately called together relatives and prayed for Teresa's intercession.

Ronald Kleinman, a pediatric specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston who treated the girl, testified about her recovery to church tribunals, stating: "I was willing to say that it was miraculous.

Teresa Benedicta of the Cross is one of the six patron saints of Europe, together with Benedict of Nursia, Cyril and Methodius, Bridget of Sweden, and Catherine of Siena.

Today there are many schools named in tribute to her, for example in her hometown, Lubliniec, Poland [27] Darmstadt, Germany,[28] Hengelo, Netherlands,[29] and Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

In 1995, Hungarian film director Márta Mészáros made a movie about the life and death of Edith Stein with the title A hetedik szoba (The Seventh Room/Chamber), starring Maia Morgenstern.

The statue comprises three different views of Stein reflecting her Jewish and Christian faith, and a pile of empty shoes representing the victims of the holocaust.

Also in 2014, the book Edith Stein and Regina Jonas: Religious Visionaries in the Time of the Death Camps, by Emily Leah Silverman, was published.

In 2018, American film director Joshua Sinclair made a movie about the life and death of Edith Stein with the title A Rose in Winter, starring Zana Marjanovic.

In April 2024, during a private audience Pope Francis received a formal request from the superior general of the Discalced Carmelites, Miguel Márquez Calle, to declare Stein a Doctor of the Church.