Happy Birthday to Mother Angelica of EWTN

EWTN Founder Mother Angelica turns 92: she founded global Catholic network in Alabama

               

By Greg Garrison | ggarrison@al.com AL.com  
 
on April 20, 2015

Retired TV talk show host Mother Angelica remains popular worldwide. She turns 92 on April 20, 2015. (File) 

Mother Angelica, founder of EWTN Global Catholic Network, celebrates her 92^nd birthday today, April 20, at the Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Hanceville where she lives.
She is cared for by a group of nuns at the cloistered monastery she founded. Although Mother Angelica is bedridden after multiple strokes, the nuns typically bring her ice cream and balloons for her birthday.
Mother Angelica founded EWTN in a garage at the monastery when it was located in Irondale. EWTN went on the air in 1981 and maintains its world headquarters in Irondale, but the monastery moved to rural Cullman County in 1999. It's on the grounds of the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, which has a visitors' center built in the style of a 13^th Century castle.
EWTN is now available in more than 225 million television households in more than 140 countries and territories.
Mother Angelica suffered her second major stroke on Christmas Eve 2001. That left her with partial paralysis and impaired speech. Mother Angelica retired from active leadership of EWTN in 2000, stepping down as chairman of the board and CEO.
Her taped shows, several hundred of them, still air regularly on the network as ''Mother Angelica Classics.'' Many viewers of the network still feel they know the sharp-witted, wisecracking nun personally.
Mother Angelica is one of nine cloistered nuns living at Our Lady of the Angels Monastery.
There have been as many as 40 nuns there in years past, but they have been sent to help reopen the Poor Clare mother house in France and to monasteries in Ohio, San Antonio and Phoenix.
Sister Mary Michael, who was elected mother vicar at Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in 2012, is the only remaining nun who came to Alabama from Ohio when Mother Angelica started the monastery in Irondale in 1962. Sister Mary Michael, who used to be a full-time cook for Mother Angelica, usually brings her dinner and sits with her while she eats.
Mother Angelica was born on April 20, 1923 as Rita Rizzo in Canton, Ohio.