Edith Stein and the power of spiritual autobiographies
Edith Stein was canonized by John Paul II on October 11, 1998. Born in 1891 into an observant Jewish family in what is now part of Poland, Edith Stein was the youngest of 11 children and apparently her mother’s favorite. An extremely precocious child, she manifested at an early age a passion for the truth, but as she grew up, the faith of her family receded from importance. As Phyllis Zagano has noted, “She did not necessarily repudiate Judaism; more strictly she simply stopped thinking about God. By her own … read more