Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation (born Rita Antoinette Rizzo; April 20, 1923 – March 27, 2016) was an American Roman Catholic nun best known as a television personality and the founder of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), the giant Catholic media broadcasting network.
She was the only child of her parents; her father abandoned the family when she was young and provided little support, which caused her family to be stigmatized in the local community (and even by the nuns of the parochial school she attended; she ultimately graduated from a public school).
Having had a stomach ailment for many years, she was persuaded to pray a novena; on the final day the ailment was cured, after which she agreed to become a full-time servant of Christ. Roughly a year later, she felt God's calling to be a nun. A later accident with an industrial floor-scrubbing machine left her with lifelong spinal and leg injuries; she took the accident as a divine sign and promised to establish a monastery for Blacks in the Southern United States (an area which is predominantly Protestant) if she recovered, which she ultimately did in 1962.
Around that time she began recording broadcasts on Catholic-related matters and was inspired to continue; her broadcasts would be shown on the Pentecostal-affiliated Christian Broadcasting Network. In 1981, she would start EWTN, for which she is best known. She would continue broadcasting on the network until 2001 when she suffered a series of strokes.
Mother Angelica would pass away on Easter Sunday 2016. She is buried on the monastery grounds.