Benedetta di Assisi

Who they were

Benedetta entered the Poor Clares of San Damiano in Assisi in 1214 and succeeded Saint Clare as abbess of the monastery, an office she held until 1260; she is almost certainly the same Benedetta recorded as abbess at Siena in 1227 and at Vallegloria, near Spello, from 1240 to 1248.

She was present at the canonisation process for Saint Clare in November 1253, though she did not testify there, probably because she had long been away from Assisi; after Clare's death, friars Leo and Angelo entrusted her with the breviary that Saint Francis had used. She lived to see the beginning of the basilica of Saint Clare in 1257 and the move of the Poor Clares from San Damiano to the buildings by the old church of San Giorgio, where she too was buried; the Franciscan Martyrology says her life shone with remarkable prudence and a great reputation for virtue and miracles. In 1602 her relics were placed, with those of Blessed Amata and Saint Agnes, in the chapel of Saint Agnes in the basilica of Saint Clare.

The miracles

There was never a formal cause: she has been honoured as blessed since before the Church's formal processes began.

Why that counted as sanctity

Successor to St Clare as abbess of San Damiano, present at Clare's canonisation process in 1253; venerated as blessed since the Middle Ages.

The cause