Monastery of St. Edith Stein
1500 Hendrickson Street
Brooklyn, NY 11234
(718) 233-2877
mon.edithstein@servidoras.org
serving in the Diocese of Brooklyn

Located in Brooklyn, New York, the Monastery of St. Edith Stein, was formally opened on December 17, 1998.

The patroness of the community is St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), a Jewish convert who died as a Carmelite nun in a concentration camp during World War II. Taking into consideration the principal prayer intention of our monastery that all may come to the knowledge of the One True God, St. Edith Stein was chosen the patroness of the community.

Photo Gallery

Our Patron
St. Edith Stein (1891-1942)
Edith Stein was born in Breslau, Germany, on October 12, 1891, the youngest of seven children in a prominent Jewish family. Edith abandoned Judaism as early as 1904, becoming a self-proclaimed atheist. Arduously seeking truth, she entered the University of Gottingen. There she earned a doctorate in 1916 and emerged as one of Europe’s brightest philosophers. One of her primary endeavors was to examine phenomenology from the perspective of Thomistic thought, part of her growing interest in the Catholic teachings. Propelled by her reading of the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila, she was baptized on January 1, 1922. In 1934, she entered the Carmelite Order. But in 1938 she was moved from her monastery in Germany into another Carmelite monastery in the Netherlands to escaped mounting Nazi oppression. She was arrested in 1942 as part of the order by Hitler to liquidate all non-Aryan Catholics and was taken to Auschwitz, on August 9 or 10, 1942. There she died in the gas chambers. Pope John Paul II canonized her on October 11, 1998.