EWTN

When Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) was launched on Aug. 15, 1981, many felt there would be little demand for a Catholic network. In fact, when Mother M. Angelica, a cloistered nun, fulfilled a promise to our Lord in the early 1960s by founding Our Lady of Angels Monastery in Irondale, Ala., she had no idea she would one day found the largest religious media network in the world. Who could have imagined that a cloistered nun would found a global television network? Who could have predicted that a network funded entirely by donations from "people in the pews" instead of advertising would become the largest religious media network in the world? Yet that is the story behind the EWTN Global Catholic Network. The future Mother Angelica, foundress of EWTN, was born on April 20, 1923 in southeast Canton, Ohio to Mae Gianfrancesco Rizzo and John Rizzo. The couple named their daughter Rita Antoinette Rizzo. Realistically, no one could have expected the child to amount to much. Her parents were not religious. In fact, when Rita was only 7-years-old, her abused mother filed for divorce, which was quite a stigma in those days. Rita was so poor and her mother so mentally fragile that the child had to go to school and run her mother's dry cleaning business at the same time. As a result, she was distrustful of outsiders, never made friends and never dated. But Rita experienced two miracles in her pre-convent days, which changed her life. The first occurred in 1934. The 11-year-old adolescent went running for a bus – and missed seeing an oncoming car. When she finally saw the car, she froze. However, "two hands" picked her up and placed her on the median. The bus driver would later say he had never seen anyone jump so high. Her second miracle occurred in 1942. For years, the teenager suffered from ptosis of the stomach, which made her hands shake, her left arm go numb, and her stomach spasm, which made it hard to eat or sleep, But after a visit with Mystic Rhoda Wise, Rita experienced a miraculous healing. That healing made her realize that God loved her personally – and she began to love Him back. Her love became such that on Aug. 15, 1944, she entered a Cleveland convent and became Sister Mary Angelica of the Annunciation, a Franciscan Nun of the Most Blessed Sacrament. The order would later change its name to the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration. Sister's brash personality and poor health – including pneumonia, a tonsillectomy and water on the knees – made it unlikely that she would remain a nun. But an overnight healing of her knees convinced the order that the young nun had a vocation. Sister Angelica made her final vows on Jan. 2, 1953. But making vows didn't cure Sister of her ailments. She fell and injured her back while washing the floor and nothing, including a body cast, leg and neck traction and a back brace, cured it. However, just before a risky operation on her back, Sister made God a life-changing promise. She told Him she would start a monastery in the South if He would allow her to walk again and, although the July 31, 1956 surgery was a medical failure, Sister found she could indeed walk. Of course, Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Irondale, from which EWTN would spring, had its share of start-up problems. Despite Archbishop Toolen's "yes," Sister Angelica had to obtain approval from her bishop in Ohio as well as waivers from Rome because, at 37, she was too young to become abbess of a new monastery. It was five long years before Rome granted Mother Angelica permission to establish an Alabama Foundation, during which time she obtained the waiver and the title "Mother." As she and a handful of nuns drove south to Birmingham in February 1961, they stopped in a roadside motel for the night and Mother saw a television set for the first time. But trouble there was. In those days, only 2 percent of the population was Catholic, and not everyone was happy about the new monastery. The nuns were shot at, the mo