St. Clare of Assisi
Patron of television, eye disease, embroiderers, goldsmiths, laundry workers
Saint Clare (1194–1253), a noblewoman of Assisi, fled her family's palace on Palm Sunday 1212 to receive the habit from Francis at the chapel of the Portiuncula and to found the Order of Poor Ladies (the 'Poor Clares'), the first community of women in the Franciscan tradition. She fought the popes themselves for forty years for the privilege of absolute poverty — owning nothing, individually or in common — and obtained the approval of her Rule, the first women's monastic rule written by a woman, two days before her death. From the window of her cell at San Damiano she twice repelled a besieging army by holding up the Blessed Sacrament, for which she is patroness of television (she 'saw' the Christmas Mass at the Portiuncula from her sickbed).