Mother Angelica, founder of EWTN, dies after long illness

Mother Angelica, who founded the Eternal Word Television Network and turned it into one of the world's largest religious media operations, died March 27 at age 92. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI awarded the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice Cross to her for distinguished service to the church. The cross, whose name is Latin for "for the church and the pope," is the highest papal honor that can be conferred on laypeople and clergy.

Because of ill health, Mother Angelica received the papal award in her private quarters. But in the public ceremony, Bishop Robert J. Baker of Birmingham said "Mother Angelica's effort has been at the vanguard of the new evangelization and has had a great impact on our world."

The international scope of EWTN's media operations gave her a ready calling card at the Vatican. She built the venture into a network that transmits programs 24 hours a day to more than 230 million homes in 144 countries via cable and other technologies. It broadcasts in in English and several other languages.

Mother Angelica had been ill for years. She was operated on Dec. 24, 2001, in a Birmingham hospital to remove a blood clot in her brain after suffering her second major stroke. It left her with partial paralysis and a speech impediment.

Mother Angelica, a Poor Clare of Perpetual Adoration, often said she accompanied her faith with a "theology of risk" that gave her the resolve to undertake large projects without any clear indication she would succeed.

"Faith is having one foot on the ground and the other up in the air, waiting for the Lord to put the ground under it," she once said of her hands-on approach to doing things.

Before starting EWTN, Mother Angelica wrote what she called "mini-books" on moral and inspirational themes. The popularity of the mini-books attracted media attention, and Mother Angelica began appearing on television talk shows. These appearances, she said, made her aware of the tremendous influence television has in spreading messages.

Prior to starting EWTN, Mother Angelica was renting studio space from a Birmingham television station to produce videotapes of her talks on religious issues for airing on the Christian Broadcasting Network. She broke the relationship with the network after it aired a movie she considered blasphemous.
With the support of her religious community, Mother Angelica began consulting with media experts about starting her own TV station, hatching the idea of EWTN. The Federal Communications Commission granted her a license, and EWTN went on the air in August 1981.

She began with $200 and little knowledge about TV production. The operation started in a building meant to be a garage on the grounds of the Our Lady of the Angels Monastery she headed in the Irondale suburb of Birmingham. Originally its daily programming of several hours was carried by three cable systems.

In 1992, Mother Angelica launched the short-wave EWTN Global Catholic Radio which broadcasts in English and Spanish. In 1996, EWTN started a satellite-delivered AM/FM radio network with programming also available for rebroadcast by local stations.

In 1998, Mother Angelica stepped down as the head of EWTN.

Mother Angelica was born April 20, 1923, as Rita Rizzo in an Italian neighborhood in Canton, Ohio. She described her childhood as rough. Her father abandoned the family when she was young and her parents eventually divorced. She lived with her mother and said their existence was marked by poverty.

"We lived in rat-infested apartments—our life was so hard. I was interested in survival so I didn't do well in school. It's hard when you're hungry and cold to study," she recalled in 1987.

In 1944, she joined her religious order and professed her solemn vows in Canton in 1953 as Sister Mary Angelica of the Annunciation.

In 1962, she founded Our Lady of the Angels Monastery; a move she said was to fulfill a promise to Christ if she emerged from an operation able to walk. The operation was necessary after she slipped while using an electric scrubbing machine and was thrown against the wall, injuring her spine. After the operation, she used a leg brace.