MADRID, 22 (NE) The Hall of Culture of the Metropolitan Seminary of Seville, Spain, will hold an exhibit titled "Edith Stein, a life lived for truth," from March 24 to 30. The main events of Edith Stein's life, spirituality and spiritual work, as well as the difficult political and social environment during which Saint Theresa Benedicta lived until her transportation to the concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was martyred, will be presented. Three conferences will also take place, to explain her life and work. Auxiliary Bishop Cesar Augusto Franco Martinez of Madrid will be present at the closing event.

    Saint Theresa Benedicta, Carmelite contemplative religious woman, was a convert from Judaism. Pope John Paul II canonized her on October 11, 1998. She was born in Poland, within a Jewish family. Her adolescence and intellectual formation was marked by an incessant search for the meaning of existence. She distanced herself from God for some time, and considered herself atheistic. In 1922, when she was 31 years old, she experienced a process of conversion that made her join the Catholic Church.

    Edith Stein continued in Germany her philosophical and teaching career, animated by her desire to join the important contemporary lines of thought to the Christian faith. At the beginning of the '30s she suffered the Nazi persecution for her Jewish ascendance. In 1933 she decided to enter the Carmelite monastery at Cologne. Her superiors sent her to Holland. After the Bishops of Holland denounced the abuses of Nazism, Edith Stein was one of the firsts deported to the concentration camp of Auschwitz, as part of reprisals.

    During the canonization ceremony, Pope John Paul II stated that during our time truth is changed for the consensus of the majority, and stated that truth is presented as contrary to love or vice versa. "But truth and love need each other," he underlined on that occasion, and emphasized that the life of Theresa Benedicta was a witness of unity between love and truth. He called for the "new saint to become an example for us in our efforts in service of freedom and our search for truth."