Join EWTN’s Father Mitch Pacwa as he investigates ‘The Paths of Edith Stein’

Birmingham, Ala., Aug 8, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Edith Stein, the Jewish woman who would become St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, was murdered in the gas chamber at the Auschwitz concentration camp on Aug. 9, 1942. How did a brilliant Jewish philosopher not only manage to find Christ but also become a Discalced Carmelite nun, a martyr, and possibly — if the Carmelite order has its way — a doctor of the Church?

Find out when EWTN premieres “The Paths of Edith Stein: Father Mitch Pacwa’s Investigation” at 7 p.m. ET on Friday, Aug. 8, and 9 a.m. ET on Saturday, Aug. 9.

Pacwa’s half-hour program is followed by Father Charles Connor’s one-hour program “Edith Stein: St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross,” which airs at 2 p.m. ET on Saturday, Aug. 9, and 2 a.m. ET on Sunday, Aug. 10.

The journey begins as Pacwa shows viewers around the city of Wroclaw, Poland, and explains the significance of different venues to the life and spiritual journey of this intriguing woman. Viewers learn that Stein’s father died when she was just 2 years old, leaving behind his wife and 11 children, with Edith being the youngest.

Viewers also learn that Mrs. Stein was able to keep and even improve the family business because she was not only a strong and intelligent woman who had worked with her husband but also because she truly loved him.

To drive home the latter point, Pacwa shows viewers a photo of the Stein family and challenges the audience to find the oddity. Looking closely, viewers see that the photo of Mr. Stein has been cut out of another picture and pasted into the family photo. That’s because Mr. Stein had died years before the family photo was taken.

Pacwa concludes that while Edith learned from her mother that she had to show her family that she could take care of them after their father’s death, she also wanted them to see that he was still part of the family. Pacwa notes that Edith had a romantic desire for a love like her mother and father, but she found it in Christ.

Both Pacwa and O’Connor also discuss the love that mother and daughter had for each other and explain the life-changing impact that Edith’s “chance” reading of St. Teresa of Ávila’s autobiography had on the budding saint, who, after reading it in one sitting, famously declared: “This is the truth.”

Pacwa notes that even after her conversion, Edith Stein joined her family at synagogue to pray and to observe the great fast of Yom Kippur. He says: “This has been my experience with a number of other Jewish people who became Catholic. They didn’t see their Catholicism as a rejection of Judaism. … They found … they could understand their Judaism even more in the light of Jesus Christ.”

But that doesn’t mean this wasn’t hard for her mother. O’Connor says Edith was aware that while her mother hugged her newly Catholic daughter warmly as she left the house, she didn’t come to the window as she customarily did to watch her depart.

O’Connor tells viewers that Edith would spend eight years living with Dominican nuns in Speyer, Germany, where she taught at St. Magdalena’s. While that meant she put aside the rigors of her scholarly life, it gave her an intimate knowledge of convent life “and she began to grow more and more attracted to the idea that she might someday give herself to … religious life.”

While the future St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross never lost her love for St. Benedict, as evidenced by the religious name she took in Carmel, it was her love of St. Teresa of Ávila, and later St. Thérèse, that attracted her to the Carmelite order.

O’Connor then shares something about Edith’s journey that can help anyone who is struggling to make a decision.

“[Edith’s] desire to enter Carmel was growing with each passing day, but she was very much concerned with the effect that it would have on her mother and on her family. But finally, she thought to herself, ‘While I’m very concerned with it, I cannot wait the rest of my life. I have to make a decision … I have to do something.’ She was 42 years old. She knew that life did not go on forever. If she was going to make this move … she had better do it, and she had better do it soon, and so she decided that she would indeed enter Carmel.”

Her conviction that she shouldn’t put her decision off forever was somewhat prescient, since the Nazis murdered the saint on Aug. 9, 1942, at the age of 50.