Hello. In the history of Christianity, certain famous saints, such as St John Of The Cross and St. Teresa of Avila, were from converso Jewish families. This shows there is no such thing as a racial "anti-semiticism"; that there was/is only opposition to an ideology we are witnessing at play in Gaza today.
Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda Dávila y Ahumada was born on 28 March 1515. Her birthplace was either Ávila or Gotarrendura. Her paternal grandfather, Juan Sánchez de Toledo, was a marrano or converso, a Jew forced to convert to Christianity or emigrate. When Teresa's father was a child, Juan was condemned by the Spanish Inquisition for allegedly returning to Judaism, but he was later able to assume a Catholic identity. Her father, Alonso Sánchez de Cepeda, was a successful wool merchant and one of the wealthiest men in Ávila. He bought a knighthood and assimilated successfully into Christian society.
John of the Cross OCD (Spanish: Juan de la Cruz; Latin: Ioannes a Cruce; born Juan de Yepes y Álvarez; 24 June 1542 – 14 December 1591) was a Spanish Catholic priest, mystic, and Carmelite friar of converso origin. He is a major figure of the Counter-Reformation in Spain, and he is one of the thirty-seven Doctors of the Church. He was born Juan de Yepes y Álvarez at Fontiveros, Old Castile, into a converso family (descendants of Jewish converts to Catholicism) in Fontiveros, near Ávila, a town of around 2,000 people.
