About Poor Clares

For more than seven hundred years they have come, following Francis and Clare, drawn by the ideal of "observing the holy gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ" and proclaiming the good news by their Spirit-filled lives.

To the bedrock of Franciscan poverty, Clare added the contemplative vision, fashioning her own unique gift in the church. And it is this combination of absolute poverty, along with the silence and solitude of contemplative living within enclosed community, that is the legacy that Clare left to her order.

Clare's first Rule was modified by the Pope, but she remained true to her ideal and, on her deathbed, won for her order what remains their "privilege of highest poverty." Today, the Poor Clares form a worldwide order of more than 17,000 nuns in a thousand monasteries, some thirty of which are located in the United States. All follow the same Rule and share the same basic Constitutions. Yet each monastery remains totally autonomous with its own abbess, chapter of all finally professed sisters, and novitiate, giving expression to its own particular nuancing of Clare's spirit. In this way the Order's "form of life" can be as wide as the world and as unique as each particular monastery.

From the oldest house in Assisi to the latest foundation, the central elements of the Poor Clare charism remain the same. Material poverty gives expression to a total reliance on the care of a loving God, for it is the individual who possesses nothing of her own who can discover the joy of belonging wholly to God. Poor Clare poverty is integral, then, to a life given wholly to prayer, adoration, and intercession for the whole Body of Christ.

Each monastic day provides the opportunity for long periods of personal prayer, as well as the enrichment of Eucharistic celebration and its continuation through the Liturgy of the Hours. Silence and solitude, so necessary to contemplative life, are balanced by close community living and the warm support of sisters who truly love each other.

Simple manual work is another staple of the life, contributing toward the material support of the sisters and giving expression to their desire to serve others. Since theirs is a purely contemplative call, the nuns do not engage in any direct apostolate outside of the monastery.

Following Vatican II, these ideals of Poor Clare living have been renewed and the order's Constitutions have been updated.

Within this approved framework each monastic chapter makes decisions about particular expressions of enclosure, contact with those outside of the monastery and types of work and daily schedule. Such adaptations are accidental differences; the Poor Clare spirit remains essentially the same.