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I can attest that, in "fashionable" Catholic circles during the eighties and nineties of the last century, it was almost de rigueur to make fun of Mother Angelica. She was a crude popularizer, an opponent of Vatican II, an arch-conservative, a culture-warrior, etc., etc.

And yet while her critics have largely faded away, her impact and influence are incontestable. Against all odds and expectations, she created an evangelical vehicle without equal in the history of the Catholic Church.

Starting from, quite literally, a garage in Alabama, EWTN now reaches 230 million homes in over 140 countries around the world. With the possible exception of John Paul II himself, she was the most watched and most effective Catholic evangelizer of the last fifty years.

Read Raymond Arroyo's splendid biography in order to get the full story of how Rita Rizzo, born and raised in a tough neighborhood in Canton, Ohio, came in time to be a nun, a foundress, and a television personality.

For the purposes of this brief article, I would like simply to draw attention to three areas of particular spiritual importance in the life of Mother Angelica: her trust in God's providence, her keen sense of the supernatural quality of religion, and her conviction that suffering is of salvific value.

The accounts of the beginning of EWTN read like the stories of some of the great saintly founders of movements and orders within the Church. Mother had a blithe confidence that if God called her to do something, he would provide what was needed.

Her right hand man, Deacon Bill Steltemeier, a lawyer and businessman who would prove indispensable in getting the operation of EWTN off the ground, came to her in the most remarkable way.

While in Chicago for a convention, he saw a flyer advertising a speech at a local parish by a nun whom he did not know. For some reason, he felt compelled to attend. Despite typically horrific Chicago winter weather and though he had no real idea where he was going, he made it to the parish and caught the second half of the nun's presentation. Continue reading

Sources

• Bishop Robert Barron, writing in The Catholic World Report.
• Image: Crux

The cloistered Franciscan nun died at the age of 92 due to complications of a stroke.

"She's in heaven," Pope Francis told members of the Rome bureau of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) on Wednesday.

John Allen Jr., a journalist covering the Catholic Church, described Mother Angelica as a "lone figure, around whom an entire multimedia empire sprung up."

"She was, in effect, her generation's Archbishop Fulton Sheen, someone whose videos will be circulated, cherished, and devoured forever by her devotees," Allen wrote in the new site Crux.

Mother Angelica began EWTN in 1981. By the time she retired in 2001, her 24-hour Catholic programming network already reached over 100 million homes in the United States, South America, Africa and Europe.

In 1995, Time magazine called her "an improbable superstar of religious broadcasting and arguably the most influential Roman Catholic woman in America."

In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI awarded Mother Angelica the Cross of Honor for distinguished service. It is the highest award a pope can give to a member of the laity, the term by which the church defines everyone except ordained priests.

Mother Angelica was born Rita Antoinette Rizzo on April 20, 1923, in Canton, Ohio, the only child of John and Mae Rizzo. Her father abandoned the family when she was five, and she spent much of her early life plagued by an array of stomach ailments.

In an interview with The New York Times in 1989, Mother Angelica described how a visit to a television studio in Chicago ignited her entrepreneurial drive, and led to the birth of her worldwide enterprise.

Sources

Catholic News Agency
Crux
The New York Times
Image: Crux

The founder of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) is in a stable condition.

Her doctors felt it necessary to put her on a feeding tube to ensure that she is receiving proper nutrition.

Mother Angelica suffered an incapacitating stroke in 2001.

The sisters at her Alabama monastery said that the tube is not a last-ditch effort to keep her alive, and that the 92-year-old nun has regained some strength and weight.

Luke Johansen, a spokesman for the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, Mother Angelica's order, said "The Lord is in charge; she may be taken tomorrow, we don't know".

"But at least the initial intent of the feeding tube was not an end-of-life kind of thing, but to assist her and help her get the nutrients she was lacking."

And that has seemed to work, he said.

She is able to take some foods orally and to receive the host and wine of the sacraments most days.

Mother Angelica remains confined to bed and sleeps a good deal, Mr Johnasen said, and she is unable to communicate except by squeezing a visitor's hand, or with a smile.

"When she's awake, her mind is very lucid," he said.

"She knows who people are."

A recent update from her order stated: "There were some up and down moments, and Mother has suffered a great deal these past months."

Famed for her TV appearances wearing a black-and-white habit and a sweet but steely smile, Mother Angelica would not hesitate to scold Church leaders who she felt were too lax in their teachings or practices.

She promoted traditional devotions and rites and claimed to have experienced mystical visions herself.

Sources

• Religion News Service
• Facebook
• Image: National Catholic Reporter

A trained psychologist, he was a fixture on Mother Angelica's Eternal Word Television Network, better known as EWTN.

With other Capuchin priests, he formed the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, based in New York City, in 1987.

The y highlighted communal living and wore traditional garb while serving the poor and needy.

They would also use any means they could to promote their message; a rock band organised by some of the sandal-clad, bearded brothers inspired a 2007 New York Times story called "Monks Who Play Punk."

Fr Groeschel's community touched a chord, and, at his death, had nine friaries in the US, four in Europe and two convents in Central America.

In 2012, he apologised for controversial comments that blamed some child victims of clerical sexual abuse for inviting the molestation.

After this he stopped his EWTN appearances and gave up the public spotlight.

"At some point you have to take the car keys away from grandpa," Fr Glenn Sudano, a spokesman for the friars, said at the time.

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The live, half-hour show, scheduled to start in July, is a major step for the broadcaster, whose message is typically expressed through devotional talk shows, replays of Mass and religious education programming such as series on the Eucharist or the saints.

EWTN — the initials stand for Eternal Word Television Network — was started by Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation in a garage at her Alabama monastery in 1981.

Its programming now reaches more than 146 million homes in 127 countries and 16 territories on more than 5200 cable systems, wireless cable, direct broadcast satellite, low power television and individual satellite users.

By planting a stake in Washington — in an office space near Capitol Hill — EWTN hopes to raise its profile on issues where religion converges with public affairs: abortion, contraception, stem cell research, immigration, the death penalty, terrorism and repression of Christians abroad, according to a Washington Post report.

"It's a deliberate choice to be in the midst of everything," said Michael P. Warsaw, EWTN's president and chief executive. "We hope it has an impact on policymakers and the inside-the-Beltway crowd."

The Post reported that experts on media and Catholic affairs said EWTN would fill a void, because there is no other daily news TV progamme that is pitched to the estimated 75 million Catholics in the United States.

And while the network's guests include a steady diet of those who represent the conservative wing of the church, EWTN does not stoke right-wing fury like a Fox News commentator.

"EWTN has a lot of people on its air, and they don't all sing from the same songbook," said John L. Allen Jr., a Vatican authority and senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter.

The network is almost entirely funded by donations from a committed audience. Its pitch is: "Keep us between your gas and electric bill."

Sources:

TribLive

Eternal Word Television Network (Wikipedia)

Image: The Catholic Company

"That a cloistered nun with no experience was able to build a worldwide Catholic media network based in Irondale, Alabama, reaffirms my faith every day," said Michael Warsaw, president and chief executive officer of EWTN, in a birthday message. "It is nothing short of miraculous."

Mother Angelica was born in 1923 to an Italian-American family in Ohio and had a difficult childhood in a broken home during the Great Depression. As a child she suffered a severe stomach ailment, from which she believed she was miraculously cured.

She then decided to devote her life to God, joining the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, a contemplative Franciscan community. In 1962 she founded a monastery for the order in Irondale, Alabama.

In the 1970s Mother Angelica began making videotaped programmes for television, including a CBS affiliate station. When the CBS station scheduled a controversial movie, she refused to produce any more shows for that station and converted a garage behind the monastery into a television studio.

Her programmes aired on various Christian stations while she planned to buy satellite space to launch her own Catholic cable channel.

EWTN began in 1981, broadcasting for five hours a day and featuring a weekly televised Mass, re-runs of Bishop Fulton Sheen programmes, Lutheran dramas, some 1950s westerns, and a talk show called Mother Angelica Live.

EWTN is now available in over 150 million television households in more than 140 countries. It uses direct broadcast satellite television and radio services, AM and FM radio networks, worldwide short-wave radio, an internet website and a publishing arm.

As a voice for American conservative and traditional Catholics, Mother Angelica has had disagreements with some Catholic bishops, one of them over a pastoral letter by Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles on the Eucharist and liturgy. After this dispute, EWTN set up its own theology department.

Mother Angelica turned control of EWTN over to a board in 2000, and in 2001 suffered a stroke and ceased live TV appearances.

Sources:

Catholic News Agency

Mother Angelica (Wikipedia)

Image: Insite