Clare Vaughan, abbess of Notting Hill, to send sisters to his Welsh diocese, and the community of Ty Mam Duw was founded. For the monasteries which followed her reform, Colette prescribed extreme poverty, going barefoot, and the observance of perpetual fasting and abstinence. The Colettines follow their own Constitutions sanctioned in 1434 by the then-Minister General of the friars, William of Casale, and approved in 1448 by Pope Nicholas V, in 1458 by Pope Pius II, and in 1482 by Pope Sixtus IV. The community includes both cloistered nuns and extern sisters. Colettines in the United States In Germany, the late 19th-century saw a major wave of suppressions of monastic institutions under the government policy of Kulturkampf. Among them was the Colettine monastery in Düsseldorf, whose members had been expelled from their home. They sought a place of refuge in the United States and sent requests to various dioceses around the country. The Bishop of Cleveland agreed to receive them into his diocese, and five nuns of the German community travelled there in 1877, establishing a small monastery in the city on Perry Street. They were the first monastery of the Order of St. Clare in North America. In 1916 Bishop Peter James Muldoon, of Rockford, Illinois invited the sisters in Cleveland to establish a presence in his diocese. The Poor Clare Monastery of Our Lady of Mercy, in Belleville, Illinois, under the patronage of Our Lady of Guadalupe, was founded in June 1986 from the Poor Clare Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Roswell, New Mexico. Seven founding sisters arrived in Kokomo, Indiana in 1959, at the invitation of Most Rev. John J. Carberry, the bishop of the Diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana. Today there are also monasteries in California, Illinois and South Carolina. Foundations from the American monasteries have been established in Brazil (1950) and the Netherlands (1990). Friars A branch of Franciscan friars following the spirit of Colette's reform was established and approved, under the leadership of Henry de Beaume. They were known as Coletans, and were connected to the monasteries of the Colettine nuns. By 1448, there were thirteen friaries of this branch. Along with other smaller reforms, they were merged by the Holy See into the Observant branch of the friars in 1517. See also Saint Colette Mary Magdalen Bentivoglio Poor Clares References External sources Immaculate Heart Monastery, Los Altos Hills, California Monastery of Poor Clares,