Sunday 11 August 2019

clair obscur

Passing away this day in 1253 after enduring a long bout of illness that left her bedridden, Chiara Offreduccio of Assisi, inspired by the example of Saint Francis went on to found the Order of the Poor Clares, is honoured with a Feast Day. Centuries later, the media savvy Pope Pius XII the year after the publication of his 1957 encyclical Miranda Prorsus on motion pictures, radio and the media, declared that television be added to her patronage (goldsmithy, laundry-quartermasters, pleasant weather), expanding on one anecdote told of her devotion to church services and how even though confined to her room during her final days, she was still able to hear and watch the mass as it appeared on her wall.