Born in New York City to an ex-chorus girl and an itinerant musician who soon deserted his family, Clare and her younger brother knew poverty first-hand. Blessed with intelligence and an ambitious mother, Clare was sent to the best schools her mother could afford, where she excelled academically and was able to create professional networks.

Following her schooling, Clare met and married the wealthy George Brokaw, with whom she had her only child, Anne. The marriage ended in divorce. She then went to work as an editor of Vanity Fair, travelling 72,000 miles as correspondent, and wrote the first of several plays, The Women. In 1935 she married Henry Luce, co-founder of TIME Magazine and later LIFE Magazine.

In 1941 Clare Boothe Luce agreed to run for political office, filling the seat held by her late step-father, Dr. Austin. She won the election and in 1949 was re-elected. While in Congress she was named to the powerful Committee on Military Affairs.

Throughout her term she attacked President Roosevelt's foreign policy and management of the war effort. As the war ended, Clare issued a warning about the threat of aggression from the Soviet Union. It has also been claimed she predicted the upcoming assault on Pearl Harbor but was unheeded by authorities.

At the request of President Eisenhower, she was named Ambassador to Italy in 1946. She was a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan. She was devastated by the death of her daughter in an automobile accident and, following the death of Henry Luce, Clare lived in Hawaii much of the year, returning to Washington in the 1980's where she died in October 1987.

Fulton Sheen’s impact on the course of her life was tremendous. While she was preparing a massive religious confessional that would span three issues of McCall's in the spring of 1947, Sheen reminded her that her account would be "the greatest personal narrative of conversion ever done in this country." God, he said, "gave you everything, a brilliant intellect, an unusual charm and expansive personality, prestige and materialities, but He kept back one thing- His peace."

Dealing with the loss of her daughter prompted her to seek out God. Her conversion experience and Sheen’s influence is sensitively portrayed in a biography by Ralph Shedegg:

In a daze, Clare went down the hill to the little Catholic church where they had been the day before. She tried to pray but discovered that the only prayer she knew was the Our Father. God or religion had never been part of her life.

She did not think of herself as an atheist nor an agnostic. She just did not have any kind of a relationship with God. Now, she turned to God, not so much in prayer but rather in resentment asking why this happened…

Later, Bishop Sheen would describe Clare at their first meeting as being rebellious, questioning and defiant. He asked her to dinner but refused to talk about religion during the meal.

Later in his office, he set the structure for their talks: "I will talk about five minutes on the subject, uninterrupted. Then at the end of five minutes you may take an hour to talk."

After about three minutes, Sheen mentioned the goodness of God. Clare jumped out of her seat, stuck her finger under his nose and demanded, "Listen, if God is good why did He take my daughter?"

"In order that you might be here in faith," he replied.

"Is that why you invited me to dinner?"

"That is the reason," admitted Sheen.

This was the first of many meetings between Father Sheen and Clare. God had touched her heart and between her two terms as a Congresswoman she became a Catholic. Later, when asked why she became a Catholic she answered, "It is very simple. . . to get rid of my sins. . .to have my sins forgiven. This will not make sense to people who have never sinned."

Although she was a public figure, Clare never made a secret of her conversion to Catholicism. She declared openly and with conviction that her discovery of the goodness of God and her acceptance of Catholicism was the turning point of her life.

…She infused into everything she did her new-found faith. She made no apologies that her Catholic faith was foremost in her life and she exerted a powerful influence on the many important people in her political and social world.

Twenty-three years after Clare's conversion, Bishop Sheen was asked to describe her. He replied: “I have not hit yet upon the answer. It has something to do with light. I have never met or talked with a more brilliant mind than Clare. She is scintillating. Her mind is like a rapier. It catches foibles at a second and in that it stands out, and faith had to be the perfection of such a mind” (Shedegg).

Sources:

“Clare Booth Luce.” Connecticut’s Women’s Hall of Fame. 13 March 2007. <http://www.cwhf.org/hall/luce/luce.htm>

Heinze, Andrew R. ”Clare Boothe Luce and the Jews: A Chapter from the Catholic-Jewish Disputation of Postwar America” American Jewish History - Volume 88, Number 3, September 2000, pp. 361-376 <http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/american_jewish_history/v088/88.3heinze.html>

Shedegg, Ralph. Clare Booth Luce. “Touched By God.” 13 March 2007. <http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/4354/luce.html>

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