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VISITATOR, CHAPLAIN AND

CARDINAL PROTECTOR

• The Office of the Visitator

• The Chaplain and his Duties

• The Cardinal Protector

Submission to the Roman See

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CHAPTER XII, 1-14
1
Let our Visitator always be taken from the Order of
the Friars Minor according to the will and command of
our Cardinal. 2Let him be the kind of person who is well
known for his integrity and good manner of living. 3His
duty shall be to correct any excesses against the form of
our profession, whether these be in head or in the
members. 4Taking his stand in a public place, that he can
be seen by others, let him speak with several and with
each one concerning the matters that pertain to the duty
of the visitation as he sees best.
5
We ask as a favor of the same Order a chaplain and a
clerical companion of good reputation, 6of prudent
discernment and two lay brothers, lovers of a holy and
upright way of life, in support of our poverty, 7as we have
always mercifully had from the aforesaid Order of Friars
Minor, in light of the love of God and our Blessed
Francis.
8
Let the chaplain not be permitted to enter the
monastery without a companion. 9When they enter, let
them remain in an open place, in such a way that they
can always see each other and be seen by others. 10They
may enter the enclosure for the confession of the sick
who cannot go to the parlor, for their Communion, for
the Last Anointing and the Prayers of the Dying.
11
Suitable and sufficient outsiders may enter,
moreover, according to the prudence of the abbess, for
funeral services and on the solemnity of Masses for the
Dead, for digging or opening a grave, or also for making
arrangements for it.
12
Let the sisters be strictly bound to always have the
Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, who has been
delegated by the Lord Pope for the Friars Minor, as
Governor, Protector, and Corrector, 13that always
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submissive and subject to the feet of that holy Church and
steadfast in the Catholic faith, 14 we may always observe
the poverty and humility or our Lord Jesus Christ and of
His most holy Mother and the holy Gospel we have firmly
promised. Amen.

The Office of the Visitator

The “visit” has always been in the life of the Church a

most suitable means to maintain in the Christian
communities the fidelity to their commitment of faith. The
apostles practiced it and the bishops, their successors, have
continued doing so. From of old, it has also been a
common practice, one way or another, in religious life. St.
Francis gave utmost importance to this pastoral duty of
visiting their brothers by the “ministers and servants” in
order to console, animate and correct them, if needed.
Clare imposes on the abbess the duty of “visiting” her
sisters (chapter X), i.e., attending to the welfare of each one
through personal dialogue, since the Mother is to be a
spiritual guide of all. She likewise knows that the
community as such, the superior included, needs to be
visited too. In an institute organized in the way of a
centralized government, even with feminine institutes too,
the local communities are visited by the Provincial
Superior, the provinces by the General Superior or his
delegate. But an autonomous monastery cannot just be
visited by an outsider.
Francis had committed himself from the beginning
before Clare and her companions “to have for them loving
care and special solicitude personally and through his
brothers”. That care was to be both material and spiritual,

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and of fraternal, not juridical, reciprocity. Clare
nevertheless felt herself bonded to Francis by the
“obedience” she had promised him as Father and Founder.
We understand the reaction of the Saint, motivated
without doubt by Clare’s alarm, when, during his trip to the
Orient, a “permanent Visitator” was appointed. It was
equivalent to imposing on the poor ladies an external
superior, with the double danger of inhibiting the
community’s inner freedom and of cooling down the unity
with the Friars Minor. Clare had obtained for her
community, from Honorius III, that the task would fall
upon Philip Longgo. What displeased Francis most was the
faculty granted to the Visitator of excommunicating those
coming to disturb the San Damiano community; that is why
he had the appointment annulled.
Meanwhile, Hugolinus, who had already given the
poor ladies a Rule, was taking care of the several
communities that were budding, imitating that of San
Damiano, through a permanent Visitator, the Cistercian Fr.
Ambrose. Later on, he would entrust this task to a member
of the First Order. Once elected Pope, he would fully set
the poor ladies under the care of the Friars Minor. The
Rule of Hugolinus distinguished between the “General
Visitator”, permanent, and the “Special Visitator”, sent in
transitory to a monastery.
The Rule of Innocent IV, on setting the Damianites
under the obedience, government and magisterium of the
General and Provincial Ministers of the Order of Friars
Minor, altered the system: the major Superiors of the First
Order exercised the office of Visitators, be it personally or
by naming other visitators. The Holy See would maintain
for long that dependence.
Clare wishes to put on record in the Rule her will that
the Visitator be ever of the first Order, as a guarantee of
faithfulness to the common Gospel life.

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 The mission of the Visitator is “to correct any abuses
against the form of our profession, whether in the head or
in the members”, i.e., whether the one responsible for the
excess is the abbess or the sisters. The expression “so in
the head as in the members” was a common one in the
canonical terminology of the epoch. It was also a canonical
norm that the Visitator should be at an open public location
when talking with each of the sisters.
Canon Law does not set a fixed period of time for the
canonical visit of the bishop or regular Superior; the
previous norm was to make it every five years. The
General Constitutions mark now an ordinary frequency of
three years, before each elective chapter. The Capuchin
Constitutions confine themselves to ordering the abbess to
remind the respective prelate, at least every five years,
about his duty of lending the community his help. (Gen
CC, art. 254-256; Cap CC, 217-220). It would be
something to be desired, as St. Clare wanted, that the
Visitator would always be a religious of the First Order,
even at monasteries depending on the Diocesan Bishop; but
the most the Poor Clares can do is to express that just desire
to the bishop.

The Chaplain and His Duties

The First Order was to answer too for the ministerial

assistance through the chaplains. That is how Innocent IV
had it disposed. This meant to the Friars Minor a
subjection that would very soon become excessive, since,
as St. Clare says in her Rule, there was to be near each Poor
Clares’ Monastery a true community of well chosen
brothers: two priests “of good reputation and prudent
discernment”, and two lay brothers, “lovers of a holy and

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upright way of life”. These got the task of procuring the
nuns the material means, the Rule adds, “in support of our
poverty”.
Such had ever been Clare’s great desire: to ensure the
benefit of the spiritual and material assistance of the
Brothers of the First Order, more of the first than the latter.
On 1230, Gregory IX determined, in accordance with St.
Francis’ Rule, that no brother should go to the Poor Ladies’
monasteries without the special permission of the Holy See.
The biographer tells that Clare, “sorrowing that her sisters
would more rarely have the food of sacred teaching, sighed:
“Let him now take away from us all the brothers since he
has taken away those who provide us with the food that is
vital.” And at once, she sent back to the minister all the
brothers, not wanting to have the questors who acquired
corporal bread when they could not have the questors for
spiritual bread. When Pope Gregory heard this, he
immediately mitigated that prohibition in the hands of the
General Minister.” 1
On the decades following St. Clare’s death, there was a
certain struggle between the Major superiors of the first
Order and the Poor Sisters. The Brothers were trying to
release themselves from being in assistance of the Poor
Clares while the [sisters] persisted to demand it as a family
right. On 1263, Urban IV had to intervene in favor of the
nuns with the occasion of the General Chapter of the Order.
The Brothers – the Pope reasoned out – must assist them,
“because they are members of the one and the same body”.
The General Minister, St. Bonaventure, yielded to the
Pope’s wishes, setting as condition that the Sisters would
officially recognize that the Brothers were doing such
service not in virtue of an obligation, but only out of free
good will.
It is as plain as can be that the First Order has not
always been able in the course of centuries to please St.

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Clare with this fraternal service that she asks for as a grace
“out of the love of God and our Blessed Francis”.
The Rule has envisaged the various occasions when the
chaplain will be needed at the interior of the monastery:
hearing the confession of the ill who are unable to go to the
parlor (the site for Confessions at that time), bringing them
Holy communion, administering Holy Anointing and the
recommendation of the soul. Likewise, for the funeral rites
and burial, the chaplain may enter and as many as
necessary. The Saint departs hereto from the previous Rule
of Innocent IV which limited the entrance of the Chaplain
to the event of an ill one of “extreme seriousness”, having
to enter and exit wearing the alb, stole, and mantle; and
ordained that he was to preside the funeral rites from
outside the cloister. St. Clare’s Rule presupposes that the
solemn funeral mass is solemnized inside the cloister as a
final sign of communion with the deceased sister. Let us
recall that the Rule foresees still another motive for the
chaplain entering inside the convent: celebrating the Mass
on the seven solemnities wherein the sound and sick sisters
receive communion (chapter III).
In all these cases, the chaplain will have to go with a
companion and will always be at the sisters’ sight.
The Constitutions do not demand from the Brothers of
the First Order this fraternal service for each monastery as
Clare obtained for San Damiano. The Constitutions affirm
though, the close union with the Friars Minor and the
mutual support; recognizing in the Minister General the
office of “high spiritual moderator” that he exercises by
means of fraternal visit to monasteries and federations be it
personal or through his delegate. It also expresses their
preference for said brothers as chaplains, spiritual directors,
confessors, and formation collaborators (Gen CC, art. 120-
121; Cap CC, 8, 155, 197, 199).
With all the more reason, this union is affirmed among
all St. Clare’s daughters and the rest of cloistered
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Franciscans, who are admitted even inside the cloister
when they are out of their monasteries; and, in general,
with all the institutes of the Franciscan family and with the
Lay Franciscan Order (Gen CC, art. 122-124; Cap CC, 104,
155).

The Cardinal Protector –

Submission to the Roman See

The institution of the Cardinal Protector, that came to be

normal for the majority of the religious Institutes up to
1964, when Paul VI issued the decree of suppression, was
of Franciscan origin, and it was due to the growing interest
that Cardinal Hugolinus was getting for the movement
stirred up by St. Francis. His interest settled down mainly
in the attention to the Poor Ladies. In his Rule, the figure
of the Cardinal Protector appears already as something
stable.
“You should take solicitous care that, when a Cardinal
or a Bishop of the Roman Church, who has been specially
designated for you, has passed from this life, you always
ask from the Lord Pope another from his brother-bishops,
to whom you ought to have special recourse when
necessity arises” (Hugolinus’ Rule, 10).
Upon being constituted in 1220, at the request of St.
Francis, “protector” of the Friars Minor, i.e. representative
of the Holy See to guide the Order in its difficulties, the
responsibilities of Hugolinus stretch out to the whole
Franciscan family. Chosen Pope in 1227 under the
assumed name of Gregory IX, he appointed Cardinal
Rainaldo dei Conti as the new protector with authority over
the 24 monasteries that the “Order of San Damiano” had at

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that time. The power of the Cardinal Protector would make
itself greatly felt on the first three centuries, but became
practically annulled when the college of Cardinals took up
the representation of the papal authority for matters related
to the religious, and even more so when the Sacred
Congregation of Religious was created in 1908. The office
of Cardinal Protector was already purely nominal.
So then, the “letter of St. Clare’s Rule, reproducing the
very same prescription of Francis in his own, has perhaps
lost relevance today, but its “spirit” is still in full force. If
Francis and Clare impose upon the Order the strict
obligation of always asking from the Roman Pontiff a
Cardinal as “governor, protector and corrector” of the
fraternity, it is to assure her the unconditional
submissiveness and subjection with the holy Roman
Church, i.e. the Pope and the whole hierarchical church, a
submission that guarantees the constant fidelity to the
Catholic faith and even to its own evangelical calling:
“…that always submissive and subject to the
feet of the holy Church and steadfast in the
Catholic faith we may always observe the poverty
and humility of our Lord Jesus Christ and his holy
Mother and the Holy Gospel we have firmly
promised” (R, XII, 13).

And how well St. Clare knew how to maintain that

humble and trusting submission to the Apostolic See
without giving up nonetheless the form of life she got from
St. Francis! The first biographer describes the rejoicing of
the Saint on the day when at her deathbed received the visit
of Innocent IV:
“… The most grateful woman accepted his hand
and asked that she might also kiss the feet of the
Apostolic Authority with the greatest reverence.
The Pope agreed courteously placing his feet on a
wooden stool and she reverently inclined her face
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 toward it, kissing it above and below. Then with an
angelic expression, she asked the forgiveness of all
her sins from the Supreme Pontiff …. When
everyone had left, since she had received earlier
that day the sacred host from the hands of the
provincial minister, she “raised her eyes to
heaven”, joined her hands toward God, and, with
tears said to her sisters: “Praise the Lord, my
children, because today Christ has condescended to
give me such a blessing that heaven and earth are
not enough to compensate for it. Today, she said, I
have received the Most High and have been worthy
to see His Vicar.” (L Cl, 41ff.).

But her rejoicing was surely even greater when she

finally received the so long awaited bull through which the
same Innocent IV was approving on August 9, 1253, her
“Form of Life of the Order of the Poor Sisters founded by
St. Francis”. Clare pressed it close to her with her hands
and kissed it over and over again. Now she could die at
peace. Two days later, she expired happily with the
parchment on her hands.

Footnote to Chapter 18:

1. Gregory IX, Bull “Ino elongati” at “Bullarium Franc.” I, 70; L

CL, 37)

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