How it all began...
    In her Testament, our Mother Saint Clare tells how Saint Francis, while reconstructing the Church of San Damiano, climbed up on top of the wall of that church, and called out in a loud voice in French to some poor people lingering nearby: "Come and help me in the work of the monastery of San Damiano, for in that place later on will be ladies by whose renowned and holy way of living our heavenly Father will be glorified throughout all his holy Church."
 
"And not only about us did our most blessed Father prophesy those things, but also about the others who were to come afterwards in the holy vocation to which the Lord has called us."
                                                                             -Testament of our Mother Saint Clare

 
 In 1212, eighteen-year-old Clare of Assisi followed the call of God as revealed to her by Saint Francis. For nearly eight hundred years the Poor Clare nuns have followed their Mother in a joyful life at the heart of the Church.