Saint Clare of Assisi, born Chiara Offreduccio (July 16, 1194 – August 11, 1253) was an Italian saint and one of the first followers of Saint Francis of Assisi. She founded the Order of Poor Ladies, a monastic religious order for women in the Franciscan tradition. Following her death, the order she founded was renamed in her honor as the Order of Saint Clare, commonly referred to today as the Poor Clares.
Clare of Assisi was born in Assisi, Umbria, as the eldest daughter of Favorino Scifi, Count of Sasso-Rosso and his wife Ortolana. Ortolana was a very devout woman who had undertaken pilgrimages to Rome, Santiago de Compostela and the Holy Land. Later on in her life, Ortolana entered Clare's monastery.[1]
On March 20, 1212, Clare's parents had decided she would marry a wealthy young man. In desperation Clare escaped her home and sought refuge from St. Francis, who received her into religious life.
Clare lived for a very brief period in a nearby Benedictine monastery of nuns, San Paolo delle Abadesse, and then again for a short period at a house of female penitents, Sant'Angelo in Panza on Monte Subasio. Her sister Agnes of Assisi also left her parents and followed Clare to Sant'Angelo.
Clare and Agnes soon moved to the church of San Damiano, which Francis himself had rebuilt. Other women joined them there, and San Damiano became known for its radically austere lifestyle. The women were at first known as the "Poor Ladies".
San Damiano became the focal point for Clare's new religious order, which was known in her lifetime as the "Order of San Damiano.” San Damiano emerged as the most important house in the order, and Clare became its undisputed leader. By 1263, just ten years after Clare's death, the order became known as the Order of Saint Clare.


Unlike the Franciscan friars, whose members moved around the country to preach, Saint Clare's sisters lived in enclosure, since an itinerant life was hardly conceivable at the time for women. Their life consisted of manual labour and prayer.
For a time the order was directed by Francis himself. Then in 1216, Clare accepted the role of abbess of San Damiano. She also played a significant role in encouraging and aiding Francis, whom she saw as a spiritual father figure, and she took care of him during his illnesses at the end of his life, until his death in 1226.
After Francis's death, Clare continued to promote the growth of her order. Clare died at the age of 59. Her remains were interred at the chapel of San Giorgio while construction of a church to hold her remains was being constructed.


On August 15, 1255, Pope Alexander IV canonized Clare as Saint Clare of Assisi. On October 3 of that year Clare's remains were transferred to the newly completed basilica where they were buried beneath the high altar. In futher recognition of the saint, Pope Urban IV officially changed the name of the Order of Poor Ladies to the Order of Saint Clare in 1263.
Some 600 years later in 1872, Saint Clare's remains were transferred to a newly constructed shrine in the crypt of the Basilica of Saint Clare where they can still be seen today.
Pope Pius XII designated her as the patron saint of television in 1958, on the basis that when she was too ill to attend Mass, she had been miraculously able to see and hear it on the wall of her room.