Why Edith Stein makes an excellent choice for patron saint of Europe

„St Teresa Benedicta is the only twentieth century figure among the patrons of Europe. She is akin to St Maximilian Kolbe, who was starved to death in Auschwitz, and is also rightly venerated as a martyr of love, who laid down his life for his friends. But there is another martyr of the period of the Second World War, who is little known in the English-speaking world, who also offered himself as a victim to the Nazis so that the lives of others might be spared, namely the Servant of God Salvo d’Acquisto. I will post about him at a later date.

I think St Teresa Benedicta is an excellent choice to be patron of Europe. Auschwitz marks the low point in European history, the violation of every civilised and European value. There her dust lies, like so many, in an unmarked spot; and it is in the light of Auschwitz that we see the rebuilding of European civilisation as an urgent task. Such a civilisation can only be founded on love, the virtue that Saint Teresa Benedicta practised to such a rare degree. And some serious scholarship (she was a great intellectual) would not come amiss either.”