The origin of all the branches that make up the Franciscan Family goes back to Francis of Assisi himself. He did not deliberately seek to found three Orders, but rather allowed himself to be guided by the Holy Spirit in organizing his religious family, without following any pre-established plan.
Francis soon realized that God was calling him to an important mission with and through the brothers. Around him there arose a first fraternity, that of the Friars Minor, later also known as the First Franciscan Order, whose way of life was approved by the Pope in 1209. But the ideal that inspired Francis was so strong and compelling that it also attracted many other people, both men and women. Thus there arose communities of women, such as the one founded at San Damiano around Clare of Assisi, which gave rise to the Second Franciscan Order.
There also arose in many places fraternities of men and women who sought to put Francis’s evangelical project into practice without abandoning their family and secular commitments, forming what very early came to be known as the Third Franciscan Order. Over the course of its eight centuries of existence, the Franciscan Family has therefore undergone numerous transformations, but it still retains today those three branches that already appeared in the time of Francis of Assisi:
1) The Friars Minor, who are those Franciscans who live the religious life according to the Rule that Pope Honorius III confirmed to Francis and his brothers in 1223. Since the sixteenth century, the Franciscan friars have been divided into three distinct and autonomous branches: the Friars Minor (Franciscans OFM), the Conventual Friars Minor (OFM Conv.), and the Capuchin Friars Minor (OFM Cap.). Although relations among these three branches were not always good in the past, today they collaborate ever more harmoniously, constituting the First Order of Saint Francis.
2) The family of Franciscan contemplatives (Second Order). The great majority of them form the Order of Poor Clare Sisters, who look to Clare of Assisi and her Rule, approved in 1253. Also belonging to this group of nuns are the Conceptionists (an order founded by the Spanish Saint Beatrice of Silva at the end of the fifteenth century), the Annunciates (founded in the fifteenth century by Saint Joan of Valois), and certain female monasteries of tertiaries who live in enclosure (“the Isabels”).
3) The largest group, which is that of the Third Order, in its two forms.
The secular branch, officially known today as the Secular Franciscan Order (OFS), is composed of lay people of both sexes, married or unmarried, and also of secular priests. Its current Rule, approved in 1978, is explicitly based on the texts of Francis, especially the Letter to All the Faithful. They form an Order organized in fraternities; although they remain in their usual environment of life, they commit themselves to live according to the spirit of Francis in their lives as lay Christians. Dependent on the OFS are also the NiFra and JuFra groups, composed of children, adolescents, and young people who live their faith according to the Franciscan ideal.
The brothers and sisters of the Third Order Regular (TOR). From its origins there were already typical expressions of religious life within the Third Franciscan Order, which eventually took shape as congregations of regular life. In the sixteenth century, the Holy See finally recognized a specific character and gave a proper Rule to this branch of Franciscan tertiaries. To this group must be added more than 400 religious institutes of Franciscan inspiration of active or apostolic life, mostly female, which follow the Rule of the TOR (Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, Franciscans of the Divine Shepherd, Franciscans of the White Cross, etc.). Alongside this family with well-defined juridical profiles, there exists what is sometimes called the “Fourth Franciscan Order,” made up of countless friends of Francis, men and women who move within the Franciscan milieu and who seek to live the charism of Francis in realities different from those of the official group, in a certain sense prolonging it.
Finally, it should be mentioned that since the end of the nineteenth century the evangelical-Franciscan proposal has also found a warm reception in some Christian Churches that are not in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. More specifically, in the Anglican and Lutheran Churches there have arisen fraternities of Franciscan men and women: in the Anglican Church there exist the Society of Saint Francis, the Franciscan Order of the Divine Compassion, and in Latin America the Franciscan Order of the Divine Compassion—communities of very active Franciscan religious, a monastery of Poor Clares, and groups of Franciscan laity. Also in the Lutheran Church of Sweden and Germany there are small groups of Franciscan religious and laity. Among all Franciscans there exists—and should continue to grow ever more—a mutual knowledge and a vital communion required by belonging to the same spiritual Family.
RULE OF THE FRANCISCAN ORDER: Rule 1
Among the spiritual families raised up by the Holy Spirit in the Church, the Franciscan Family includes all those members of the People of God—laity, religious, and priests—who feel called to follow Christ in the footsteps of Saint Francis of Assisi. In diverse ways and forms, but in reciprocal vital communion, all of them propose to make present the charism of the common Seraphic Father in the life and mission of the Church.
SS. Francis & Clare of Assisi Anglican Church 