Saint Maria Crescentia Höss

Maria Crescentia Höss (Höß), TOR (1682–1744) was a religious sister of the Third Order Regular of St. Francis. In 1900, she was beatified by Pope Leo XIII, and she was canonized in 2001 by Pope John Paul II. Anna Höss was born on 20 October 1682 in Kaufbeuren, in Bavaria, Germany, to Matthias Höss and his wife, Lucia Hoermann, as the sixth of their eight children. Only three of the children survived into adulthood. Anna became a weaver, but her greatest ambition was to enter the local convent of the Tertiary Franciscans in Kaufbeuren, which occupied the old Meierhof of the town, in whose chapel she often prayed. As a poor weaver, however, her father did not have enough money to pay the customary dowry expected of a candidate, so she was not admitted. Unlike monasteries of the nuns of the Franciscan Second Order, known as the Poor Clares, the sisters of the Third Order were completely local, living under the authority of the local bishop. The history of the Third Order of St. Francis had a range of organizational models, in that many communities of religious sisters did not embrace the enclosure, but considered active works of charity, tending to the poor and sick, as part of their Franciscan charism. Monasteries like that of Kaufbeuren were established to pursue the purely contemplative life, usually in an urban setting. The Order of Friars Minor, however, refused to accept spiritual supervision or responsibility for those monasteries which did not accept the strictest form of enclosure, such as the Poor Clares had. Thus the monastic communities of the Third Order like that of Kaufbeuren, who did not have the same connection with the public as did the active Sisters, were usually entirely dependent on the local clergy for spiritual direction and on local patrons for their survival. They were often marked by their precarious financial situations.