Clara was born on April 11, 1815, in Aachen of the Kingdom of Prussia, which is now Germany. She was the 4th of 5 children of wealthy textile industrialist Louis and his wife Katherine. Her father died of a stroke when she was 5.
It was a city in transition with the beginning of industrialization causing social misery and rapid population growth. She observed the poor conditions in her town, and her mother placed importance on helping those less fortunate.
She attended a school, “Auf dem Seilgraben”, which was of the Poenitantian religious order, but then later went to St Leonhard which was for upper class girls. Priests and their congregations met in their home to review and mobilize Catholic forces to assist society. Clara took on this spirit and resolved to aid those in suffering.
She had a vision of a poor child standing in front of a building asking for alms for him and his many brothers and sisters. She realized that the child was Jesus, and the building was the motherhouse for a congregation.
When she was 22, her friends from school, Leocadia Startz, Wilhelmina Istas, and Aloysia Vossen, and herself, used all of her assets to rent a house and set up a religious school to cater to the educational needs of the poor children. They also fed and clothed them.
At the age of 28, she established the Sisters of the Poor Child Jesus after the school had grown rapidly. There were 50 children housed within the community, and several hundred attending the day schools.
Her older brother, Andreas, became a priest. He didn’t want to become a pastor as he wanted to aid his sister in the development of the congregation.
Earlier in life she had read the works of Saint Teresa of Avila and had expressed a desire to become a Carmelite nun, but she didn’t make her vows until the age of 35. Her order received diocesan approval, and later a papal decree of praise from Pope Pius IX in 1862 with full papal approval issued by Pope Leo XIII. The Rule of her order was based on the teachings of Saint Augustine.
The 4 foundresses also entered the Order and even though she was frail in health, with frequent bouts of illness, she served as the 1st superior general.
By 1872, 27 subsidiaries that also had day care centers and dormitories were founded with 670 sisters and 12,000 children and adolescents.
The Kulturkampf, which was a political conflict between the Catholic Church and the Kingdom of Prussia over the Church’s direct control over both education and ecclesiastical appointments, and with the Decree of the Ministry, her and the Order were forced to relocate to the Netherlands. 18 houses were closed and 7 were also founded in Bavaria, Belgium, Luxemburg, Austria, and England. She remained in the ‘Loreto House’ until her death on May 8, 1894. Her remains were transferred back to Aachen, Germany, in 2012.
For God’s Glory.
Clara, 2nd from left with her siblings –
The ‘Loreto House’ –
