The Poor Clare’s, officially the Order of Saint Clare originally referred to as the Order of Poor Ladies, and later the Clarisses, the Minoresses, the Franciscan Clarist Order, and the Second Order of Saint Francis – are members of a contemplative Order of nuns in the Catholic Church. The Poor Clares were the second Franciscan branch of the order to be established. Founded by Saints Clare of Assisi and Francis of Assisi on Palm Sunday in the year 1212, they were organized after the Order of Friars Minor and before the Third Order of Saint Francis for the laity. As of 2011, there were over 20,000 Poor Clare nuns in over 75 countries throughout the world. The Poor Clares follow the Rule of St. Clare, which was approved by Pope Innocent IV on the day before Clare's death in 1253. The main branch of the Order (O.S.C.) follows the observance of Pope Urban. Little is known of Clare's early life, although popular tradition hints that she came from a fairly well-to-do family in Assisi. At the age of 17, inspired by the preaching of Francis in the cathedral, Clare ran away from home to join his community of friars at the Portiuncula, some way outside the town. Although, according to tradition, her family wanted to take her back by force, Clare's dedication to holiness and poverty inspired the friars to accept her resolution. She was given the habit of a nun and transferred to Benedictine monasteries, first at Bastia and then at Sant' Angelo di Panzo, for her monastic formation. By 1216, Francis was able to offer Clare and her companions a monastery adjoining the Poor Clare’s Monastery in chapel of San Damiano where she became abbess. Clare's mother, two of her sisters, and some other wealthy women Rochester, MN from Florence soon joined her new order. Clare dedicated her order to the strict principles of Francis, setting a rule of extreme poverty far more severe than that of any female order of the time. Clare's determination that her order not be wealthy or own property, and that the nuns live entirely from alms given by local people. The movement quickly spread, though in a somewhat disorganized fashion, with several monasteries of women devoted to the Franciscan ideal springing up elsewhere in Northern Italy. At this point Ugolino, Cardinal Bishop of Ostia (the future Pope Gregory IX), was given the task of overseeing all such monasteries and preparing a formal rule. On 9 August 1253, she managed to obtain a papal bull, establishing a rule of her own, more closely following that of the friars, which forbade the possession of property either individually or as a community. Originally applying only to Clare's community at San Damiano, this rule was also adopted by many monasteries. Communities that followed this stricter rule were fewer in number than the followers of the rule formulated by Cardinal Ugolino, and became known simply as "Poor Clares" or Primitives. The spread of the order began in 1218 when a monastery was founded in Perugia; new foundations quickly followed in Florence, Venice, Mantua, and Padua. Saint Agnes of Assisi, a sister of Clare, introduced the order to Spain, where Barcelona and Burgos hosted major communities. The order then expanded to Belgium and France where a monastery was founded at Reims in 1229, followed by Montpellier, Cahors, Bordeaux, Metz, and Besançon. By A.D. 1300 there were 47 Poor Clare monasteries in Spain alone. After an attempt to establish the Order in the United States in the early 1800s by three nuns who were refugees of Revolutionary France, the Poor Clares were not permanently established in the country until the late 1870s. A small group of Colettine nuns arrived from Düsseldorf, Germany, seeking a refuge for the community which had been expelled from their monastery by the government policies of the Kulturkampf. They found a welcome in the Diocese of Cleveland, and in 1877 established a monastery in that city. At the urging of Mother Ignatius Hayes, O.S.F., in 1875 Pope Pius IX had already authorized the sending of nuns to establish a monastery of Poor Clares of the Primitive Observance from San Damiano in Assisi. After the reluctance on the part of many bishops to accept them, due to their reliance upon donations for their maintenance, a community was finally established in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1878. Currently there are also monasteries in: Alexandria, Virginia; Andover, Massachusetts; Belleville, Illinois; Bordentown, New Jersey; Boston, Massachusetts; Brenham, Texas; Chicago, Illinois; Cincinnati, Ohio; Cleveland, Ohio; Fort Wayne, Indiana, Evansville, Indiana; Los Altos Hills, California; Memphis, Tennessee; Richmond, Virginia; New Orleans; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Phoenix, Arizona; Rockford, Illinois; Roswell, New Mexico; Saginaw, Michigan; Spokane, Washington; Travelers Rest, South Carolina; Washington D.C.; and Wappingers Falls, New York. Additionally there are monasteries in Alabama, California, Florida, Missouri, Montana,Tennessee, New York City, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Colorado.