11 August - St. Clare, born Chiara Offreduccio di Favarone in Assisi on 16 July 1194. According to the acts of her canonization process, Clare Offreduccio di Favarone is the daughter of Favarone, probably of the noble line of the Counts of Coccorano.
Around 1210, in the Church of St. George in Assisi, Claire attended the Lenten sermons of Francis Bernardone, the son of a bourgeois who left everything to realise his ideal of evangelical life. Enthusiastic about this preaching, conquered by the ideal of poverty in the image of the Gospels, she decided to renounce the world, after having dreamed of travelling the Mediterranean like her mother who had made many pilgrimages to Rome, Santiago de Compostela and the Holy Land. She left her family in secret on the evening of Palm Sunday, March 20, 1212, accompanied by one of her aunts, to join Francis and his companions at the Porziuncola.
They gave her a tunic of coarse cloth, the burial robe, and cut off her hair as a sign of renunciation. According to the customs of the time, not being able to live among men, the girl then took refuge in the convent of the Benedictine nuns of San Paolo. There she had to face the violent attempts of her father and her uncles, who were furious, to take her home because they wanted to arrange a marriage of convenience for her. Then Francis entrusted her to the Benedictine nuns of San Angelo di Panzo in the foothills of Mount Subasio, southeast of Assisi. Sixteen days later she was joined by her younger sister, Catherine, who became Agnes of Assisi despite the violent opposition of their family.
At the end of April 1212, Francis set up the nascent community near the chapel of San Damiano under the leadership of Clare, who in 1214 had to accept the title of abbess in spite of herself, a community that was soon joined by women of the nobility of Assisi and by her mother on the death of her husband. Francis also entrusted a Formula vitae, a rule of life inspired by that of the Friars Minor. Thus was born the order of the Poor Ladies, or Poor Clares. In 1216, she is said to have obtained from Pope Innocent III "the privilege of poverty", that of observing absolute poverty. After the death of Francis (1226), strong pressure, both from cardinals and from civil society, aimed at making the community of Damianites accept land possessions. Clare defended herself to the end against these pressures.Her whole life is strained by her desire for a poor life.
Finally, on 16 September 1252, Cardinal Raynald approved the Rule written by Clare around 1247 on the basis of that of Francis. Pope Innocent IV visited Clare who was dying at the end of July 1253. On 9 August the Supreme Pontiff approved the Rule of the Order of the Poor Ladies. Two days later, on August 11, 1253, Clare died at the age of 59, holding the privilege of poverty in her hands. Pope Innocent IV and the Roman Curia attend her funeral. Two years later, on September 26, 1255, she was canonized by Pope Alexander IV in the Cathedral of Santa Maria d'Anagni. On October 3, 1260, her remains were transferred from the Chapel of San Giorgio, the place of her conversion, to the high altar of the new church. She was proclaimed Patroness of Television in the World by Pius XII on 14 February 1958.
