St. Clare of Assisi

St. Clare of Assisi was born on 16 July 1194 into a noble family of Assisi, Italy, and died there on 11 August 1253. Moved by the preaching of St. Francis of Assisi, she fled her family's home on the night of Palm Sunday in 1212 to consecrate herself to Christ, receiving the religious habit from Francis himself and cutting off her hair as a sign of her renunciation of the world. Despite fierce pressure from her relatives to return, she persevered.

She founded and led the community that became the Order of Poor Ladies — later called the Poor Clares — embracing a life of strict poverty, enclosure, and prayer, and she fought for decades to secure her cherished 'Privilege of Poverty' from the popes. According to tradition, she twice repelled attacking soldiers by confronting them with the Blessed Sacrament held aloft. She was canonized in 1255, just two years after her death, and was later named patron of television by Pope Pius XII, recalling a vision in which she saw a distant Mass upon her wall.