St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)

My favourite saint.

This is the biography published on the Vatican website, to mark her canonisation.

And a piece I wrote a year ago which likens her life to that of Blessed John Henry Newman.

 "We bow down before the testimony of the life and death of Edith Stein, an outstanding daughter of Israel and at the same time a daughter of the Carmelite Order, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a personality who united within her rich life a dramatic synthesis of our century. It was the synthesis of a history full of deep wounds that are still hurting ... and also the synthesis of the full truth about man. All this came together in a single heart that remained restless and unfulfilled until it finally found rest in God." These were the words of Pope John Paul II when he beatified Edith Stein in Cologne on 1 May 1987.