The Little-Known Way Saint Clare Helped Saint Francis Receive Papal Approval

A Pillar of the Franciscan Family

No story of the Franciscan family would be complete without Saint Clare (1194–1253), whose feast day we celebrate on August 11. In a sense, she was the beating heart of Saint Francis’s movement. Her life of prayer gave strength to the work of Francis and his friars. She was not only his spiritual daughter but his great friend and support, to whom he turned with his own doubts. After his death, she held firm to the way of life he had established, preserving the Franciscan legacy.

Courageous Faith

Clare was born to even greater wealth and privilege than Francis, a nobleman’s daughter raised with every luxury. High-ranking young women in those days were generally expected to marry young men of similar status, to benefit both families. But after hearing Francis preach, Clare wanted nothing more than to follow his way of life. Courageously she took matters into her own hands, slipping away from home by night.

Francis received her at the little chapel of the Portiuncula, cutting off her long hair and clothing her in a nun’s habit. She took up residence at a nearby Benedictine convent. Clare’s relatives, enraged, tried to force her to return home; but they found her decision firm. She had pledged her love to Christ, and no promises or violence would move her.

Leading the Poor Clares

Soon afterward, the scene repeated itself when Clare’s younger sister Caterina followed her into religious life, taking the name Agnes. She too is honored as a saint. A new home was built for the two sisters next to San Damiano, the church Francis had repaired. Other women joined them, forming the first convent of “Poor Ladies,” or, as we know them today, Poor Clares. 

The remainder of Clare’s life was mostly not dramatic, but it was remarkable. Like Francis, she was a trailblazer in the Church. Sr. Rosemary Stets, OSF, observes, “St. Clare has the distinction of being the first woman in history to write a Rule of Life for religious women” (Franciscan Media). She led her Sisters with gentleness and wisdom. Like Francis, she described voluntary poverty in joyous poetic language: “Cling to this poverty which has made you, my dear daughters, heiresses and queens in the heavenly kingdom” (quoted in Mother Mary Francis, A Right to Be Merry, ch. 4).

Clare and Francis enjoyed a deep spiritual bond. One episode in the Little Flowers tells how they once met to share a meal. No sooner had they sat down than Francis started speaking beautifully about God. Their hearts burned with holy love, they forgot to eat, and a heavenly glow filled the place, bringing the neighbors running to put out the fire. Another time, Francis wondered whether God wanted him to devote himself solely to prayer. He asked two of his most trusted friends, one of them Clare, to ask God for him. Both sent back the same answer: Francis had been called “that he may reap a harvest of souls” through his preaching.

A Cloistered Missionary to the World

While Francis wandered and preached, Clare lived an enclosed life. Women religious were expected to be cloistered in those days; but Mother Mary Francis argues that the Order’s nature was not determined by these expectations. After all, Francis, who launched a spiritual revolution, and Clare, who defied her social circle, were not likely to let their world’s ideas keep them from following God’s inspiration. “St. Clare … did indeed have a missionary heart,” she says. “That is why she entered the cloister, to be a missionary to all the world” (A Right to Be Merry, ch. 3, emphasis in original). Like Saint Dominic’s spiritual daughters in France, Clare and her Sisters gave grace and power to the friars’ active apostolate by their life of prayer and penance.

Carrying On the Mission of St. Francis

After Francis’s death, Clare continued to seek papal approval for the Franciscan way of life. In particular, she worked relentlessly for the “privilege” of their strict poverty, the Privilegium Paupertatis, which many even among the clergy were reluctant to accept. In time she obtained approval for this Privilegium, and finally for the whole Rule she wrote, one day before she died.

Saint Clare fell in love with Christ, and that love led her to joyfully abandon all the world’s treasures for Him. It strengthened her to resist all who tried to change her mind, as they did throughout her life. It made her God’s instrument for a great spiritual foundation that changed the Church and the world. Above all, it gave her a life far richer than she could have known in her father’s castle, for she was the bride of the King of Kings, who repays a hundredfold everything sacrificed for Him (see Mark 10:30). 

Saint Clare, pray for us!