Catholic Cable Channel Turns 25 as Founder Ails

c. 2006 Religion News Service BIRMINGHAM, Ala. _ More than 5,000 people turned out at an arena here on Saturday (Aug. 12) to celebrate the 25th anniversary of EWTN, the global Catholic satellite TV network started in Alabama by an energetic nun. Mother Angelica, 83, who founded EWTN in the garage of her Irondale monastery […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. _ More than 5,000 people turned out at an arena here on Saturday (Aug. 12) to celebrate the 25th anniversary of EWTN, the global Catholic satellite TV network started in Alabama by an energetic nun.

Mother Angelica, 83, who founded EWTN in the garage of her Irondale monastery on Aug. 15, 1981, has been in poor health and could not attend the festivities.


“She’s not feeling well,” said Mother Mary Catherine, mother vicar of the Poor Clare Nuns of Perpetual Adoration in Hanceville. “She’s tired. She stays in her room most of the time.”

Many of those who attended a televised Mass on the floor of the arena paid tribute to the former star of the network, who used to host a talk show called “Mother Angelica Live!” and taught the Bible and tickled the audience with her wit.

“Nobody else could have done it like her,” said Mary Lee of Mobile. “She was a natural comedian _ not your usual nun.”

Banners showing the famous nun’s face hung around the arena.

“Mother Angelica was the communicator for the Catholic Church,” said Bishop David E. Foley, administrator of the Diocese of Birmingham. “Through television, she had great power to reach people, to evangelize.”

A staunch traditionalist, Mother Angelica never hesitated to criticize liberals in the church. The Rev. Andrew Apostoli, who hosts a show on EWTN, said she kept U.S. Catholicism from getting too liberal.

“She stopped the church in America from going over Niagara Falls,” he said.

A group of 13 nuns from the Hanceville monastery wearing Mother Angelica’s familiar brown-and-white habits entered the arena to applause from the crowd. It was a rare public appearance for the nuns, who live a life of prayer behind the walls of the monastery and rarely leave.

The 44 nuns who live at the monastery have watched Mother Angelica struggle since she suffered a second major stroke on Christmas Eve 2001 that left her with partial paralysis and impaired speech.


Mother Angelica’s dream of a worldwide Catholic TV network became a reality, but the once-talkative nun can only look on in silence as it celebrates its 25th anniversary.

“Even getting dressed and putting on her habit tires her out,” said 23-year-old Sister Jacinta. But she still inspires the other nuns with her continued perseverance, she said, and she left behind the legacy of her gabby-grandmother personality on her taped shows. “She had a gift.”

EWTN now effectively functions without input from the nun who founded it, except for reruns of her famous talk shows.

“What we’ve been able to achieve through what Mother Angelica started is amazing,” said EWTN spokesman Scott Hults.

“We’ve never had advertisers or done fund-raising programs,” he said. “Our operating expenses are paid by donations. We reach 125 million homes in 140 countries, broadcasting in English and Spanish 24 hours a day.”

EWTN went on the air two weeks after the debut of MTV, symbol of the pop culture Mother Angelica often butted heads with. “We’re both still here, reaching out to audiences in our own ways,” Hults said.


EWTN receives as much as $3 million a month in donations and runs on a budget of about $30 million a year, Hults said. “People have written checks every month and supported us. We have zero annual revenue until the viewers send in the first check,” he said. “We know there’s a lot of love out there for this network.’

KRE/JL END GARRISON

(Greg Garrison writes for The Birmingham News in Birmingham, Ala.)

Editors: To obtain file photos of Mother Angelica, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

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