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Mother Angelica, one of the most significant figures in the post-conciliar Catholic Church in America, has died after a 14-year struggle with the after effects of a stroke.
I can attest that, in “fashionable” Catholic circles during the ’80s and ’90s 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.
Effective evangelizer
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 50 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.