St. Clare of Assisi

A noblewoman of Assisi who at eighteen heard Francis preach in the cathedral, slipped out of her father’s house on Palm Sunday night, and let Francis cut off her hair before the altar at the Portiuncula. She founded the Poor Clares — the women’s branch of the Franciscan family — and was their abbess for forty-two years, defending their privilege of absolute poverty against successive popes who wanted them better endowed.

Clare's life at San Damiano was one of radical simplicity: she and her sisters went barefoot, slept on the ground, ate no meat, and owned nothing. Yet her convent became a magnet for women of every station, including her own mother and two sisters. Francis himself called her his "little plant" and entrusted the future of his vision for women's religious life to her courage.

When a Saracen army threatened Assisi in 1240, Clare, though gravely ill, had herself carried to the convent wall and held up the monstrance containing the Blessed Sacrament; the attackers fled. She is the patroness of television, because from her sickbed she once saw and heard the Christmas Mass being celebrated in a distant church. She died in 1253, clutching the newly approved Rule she had fought decades to obtain.