St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
Patron Saint of Europe and those who Lost Parents
St. Teresa Benedicta was born Edith Stein. She was born into a German Jewish family, bur she stopped believing in God when she was fourteen years old. Her conversion to Catholicism began when she read the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila. St. Teresa Benedicta was baptized in 1922 and became a Discalced Carmelite twelve years later. She died in 1942 in a gas chamber at Auschwitz after the Nazis arrested all Dutch Jews who had converted to Christianity.