St. Clare of Assisi

Their story

Clare was born in 1194 into a noble family in Assisi, Italy. As a young woman she heard St. Francis preach and was deeply moved by his love for Christ and his joyful poverty. On the night of Palm Sunday in 1212, when she was eighteen, she secretly left her family's house and went to Francis and his brothers at the little chapel of the Portiuncula. There Francis cut off her long hair and she received a rough habit, giving her life to God. Her family tried to drag her home, but she held fast. Soon her younger sister Agnes joined her. Clare and her sisters settled at the small church of San Damiano, outside Assisi. They lived a life of prayer, work and complete poverty, owning nothing and depending on God's providence. Clare led the community for forty years, caring for her sisters with great tenderness. She fought hard for what she called the privilege of poverty, and two days before her death the pope approved the rule she had written, the first rule for women written by a woman. A famous story tells that when soldiers attacked San Damiano, Clare, though ill, had the Blessed Sacrament brought to the doorway and prayed before it, and the soldiers fled. Near the end of her life, when she was too sick to go to Mass, she was able to see and hear it on the wall of her room. For this reason Pope Pius XII named her the patron of television. She died on August 11, 1253, and was canonized two years later.