Healing and religious vocation
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Rizzo obtained a position in the advertising department of the Timken Roller Bearing Company, a major manufacturer of gun barrels, in early 1942. Serving as secretary to the vice president of advertising, she was considered successful in her role. In April 1942, her abdominal pain intensified and could no longer be managed with her existing medical belt. Dr. Wiley Scott prescribed a larger belt or corset, which alleviated the pain and allowed her to return to work. However, by November 1942, she experienced worsening symptoms, including an inability to sleep or eat, and the surgical corset caused skin blisters.
In response to her declining condition, her mother brought her to Rhoda Wise, a local figure described as a mystic and stigmatic who claimed to receive visions of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux.[5] Wise instructed Rizzo to pray a novena and asked her to promise that, if cured, she would promote devotion to St. Thérèse.
On January 17, 1943, the final day of the novena, Rizzo reported experiencing the "sharpest pains" she had ever felt and a sensation that "something was pulling [her] stomach out." Although she considered putting on her corset before getting up, she stated that a voice commanded her to rise without it. She interpreted this moment as a healing and later observed that the abdominal lump and discoloration were gone. Rizzo believed this event to be a miracle and identified it as the turning point in her life that led to her religious commitment.[7][8] She later stated, "I knew that God knew me and loved me and was interested in me. All I wanted to do after my healing was give myself to Jesus."[5]
Dr. Wiley Scott did not support the claim of a miraculous healing and described Rizzo as "a neurotic female with a mentality which is very open to any suggestive influence." Nonetheless, for Rizzo, the experience marked a significant transformation and a new direction in life.
Rizzo turned to Rhoda Wise for guidance, and she became her model of sanctity. Every Sunday, Rizzo joined the crowds at Wise's House and she would sit close to the mystic. She learned to deal with overanxious crowds who at times mistook God's assistant from God himself. Rizzo adopted devotional practices including fasting on Saturdays, reading spiritual literature, and performing the Way of the Cross at St Anthony's Church, developing a devotion to the Passion. On a Fall afternoon in 1943, when Rizzo prayed before the statue of Our Lady of Sorrows, she was overcome by a "deep awareness " that she had a vocation and had to "go wherever the Lord would send her". She sought out Monsignor Habig, Rhoda Wise's spiritual director, who affirmed the vocation. Rhoda gave her lists of communities to contact, but most would not accept her due to her poor grades.
Her first visit was to the Sisters of St. Joseph in Buffalo, New York. Monsignor Habig then suggested she visit Saint Paul's Shrine of Perpetual Adoration, a facility operated by an order of cloistered contemplative Franciscan nuns, located in Cleveland, Ohio. When visiting this order, she felt as if she were at home. The order accepted her as a postulant, inviting her to enter on August 15, 1944, at the age of 21.[9]
On November 8, 1945, Rizzo was vested as a Poor Clare nun. She received a new religious name, Angelica, which her own mother, Mae Francis, was given the honour of choosing, in the gift of Mother Agnes. Mae chose the name because Rizzo had been an "angelic and obedient daughter". She became "Sister Mary Angelica of the Annunciation". Soon afterwards, the Cleveland monastery established a new monastery in her home town of Canton and she moved there.[7]
After nearly three years in the monastery, Angelica made her first profession of vows on January 2, 1947.[10] In 1953, she made her solemn profession of vows at Sancta Clara Monastery in Ohio.
Injury and "Bargain with God"
In 1953, Sister Angelica had an accident with an industrial floor-scrubbing machine that knocked her over and injured her spine, causing her ongoing pain and later requiring her to wear leg braces for much of her life. The ache radiated from the small of her back to the middle of the left leg.[11][12] In June 1955, she sought medical review of her back pain and was given a brace to relieve the pain caused by the fall. The doctors believed the fall in 1953 had aggravated an existing spinal defect. She was fitted for a body cast to relieve her compressed spine and given oversized crutches. This failed and leg and neck traction were attempted, and she was suspended from a hospital-bed contraption for six weeks. She spent a total of four months in hospital with no improvement. She returned to the monastery with a back brace.
To alleviate pain and restore posture, her doctors decided on a spinal fusion operation. She was admitted to hospital for this in July 1956. The surgeon, Dr. Charles Houck, informed Angelica that there was a "fifty-fifty chance you'll never walk again." Angelica struck a bargain with God: "Lord, if you let me walk again, I'll build you a monastery in the South." For three years, she had been discussing a southern monastery dedicated to African Americans. This was the year that the Supreme Court banned segregation in public schools and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made headlines by organising protests throughout the South.[5]
Our Lady of the Angels, Irondale
While at Santa Clara, Angelica was inspired to create a religious community which would appeal to African Americans in the southern states and began to seek support. In 1957, Archbishop Thomas Toolen suggested that she open this community in Birmingham. With a number of other Poor Clare nuns, she worked to raise the necessary funds, partially from a small business venture making and selling fishing lures.
In 1961, the nuns bought a fifteen acres of mountain-side in Irondale, as well as an adjacent small house, for thirteen thousand dollars, the exact amount earned by the nuns' fishing lure business. On the night of February 21, 1962, five bullets were fired at the house the nuns were staying, and a further incident with five bullets occurred nearly two weeks later. On May 20, 1962, the community was officially established and named Our Lady of the Angels Monastery.[9] Later, it was relocated to the grounds of the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament. The subject experienced the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, which a Birmingham priest associated with the charismatic movement had told her about, which resulted in a new understanding of the Holy Spirit.[13]
Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament
In August 1995, Angelica began to search for land to build a new monastery. She had a conviction that the sisters needed "protection" during a coming chastisement, and she was concerned that the noise pollution around the existing monastery was not suitable for the contemplative life. In October 1995, she viewed a two-hundred acre plot in Hanceville, an hour north of Birmingham. "I felt the Lord's presence so strongly," she said.
The architect, Walter Anderton, was a Baptist, and her only instructions were that the monastery resemble the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi and have a 13th-century character. In 1996, Angelica visited South America to publicise her new Spanish-language channel. In Bogotá, Colombia, she visited a small shrine of the Divino Niño. Later, she revealed that she had a vision where the statue of the Child Jesus turned to her, and said with the audible voice of a child, "Build Me a temple and I will help those who help you." Mother Angelica interpreted this as the Christ Child desiring an elaborate shrine. Private donors contributed $48.6 million, and she opened the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville in 1999.
EWTN
In 1962, Angelica began a series of community meetings on matters relevant to Catholicism and also began recording her talks for sale. Bishop Joseph Vath noticed her talent for communicating with the lay public and encouraged her to continue; she began taping a radio show for broadcast on Sunday mornings and published her first book in 1972. In the late 1970s, she began videotaping her talks for television, which were broadcast on the satellite Christian Broadcasting Network.[8] In 1981, after visiting a Chicago television studio and being impressed by its capability, she formed the nonprofit civil corporation to be called the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN). Initially, she recorded her shows in a converted garage on the monastery's property.
On February 16, 1981, the Sacred Congregation for Religious informed Vath that Mother Angelica was a cloistered nun and thus may not travel, other than to her studio. She had been giving talks outside for years with the bishop's blessing. The apostolic nuncio suggested exclaustration (i.e., the suspension of a religious from their community and vows for three years), which shocked Mother Angelica. Cardinal Silvio Oddi, head of the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy, rescued the situation; he visited Mother Angelica and secured exemptions under Church law which enabled to leave the monastery on business.
EWTN became a voice for American conservatism and traditionalist Catholicism, with its position on religious and social issues often mirroring that of Pope John Paul II.
WEWN
On December 28, 1992, Mother Angelica launched a radio network, WEWN, which is carried by 215 stations, as well as on shortwave.[17]
