Mother Angelica

Mother Angelica was born Rita Antionette Rizzo in Canton, Ohio, in 1923 as the only child of John and Mae Rizzo. Her childhood was marred by poverty and unhappiness. Her father abondoned the family when she was very young, and her mother struggled with chronic depression and poverty. They struggled to run a dry-cleaning business, living in a rat-infested apartment and barely making ends meet. Also, they suffered ostrocism for the divorce, and young Rita had very few friends. Rita learned responsibility at a young age, helping her mother run the business, and the hard work took a toll on her school grades. Later, she would remark "I worked hard for those Fs. " She and her mother were not regular church goers, yet they were fervent in their Catholic faith and belief in God's providence. One day, Rita was making a delivery when she narrowly missed being run down by a truck. She said it was as though two strong hands had lifted her to safety. She immediately told her mother, and both took it as a sign. A few years later, at age 15, Rita developed a severe intestinal ailment and couldn't get medical care. She started praying the stations of the cross at her local church, and was miraculously healed. During one of her sojourns to St. Anthony's, kneeling before Our Lady of Sorrows, the impossible happened. "When I knelt I just knew it, I just knew it. I was to be a nun," Mother Angelica says.

Her parents, John Rizzo and Mae Helen Gianfransisco, divorced in 1929.

In 1946 Mother Angelica, still a young nun, Sister Angelica, has an accident that injures her spine, causing her ongoing pain and requiring her to wear leg braces for most of her life. In May 1993 during a hospital stay the severity of Mother's cough shatters a vertebra in her spine, damaging a nerve to her right leg and causing her excruciating pain. She now wears a new back and leg brace and can only walk with crutches.

Entered the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration monastery in Cleveland at age 21, and eventually helped open the Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Alabama in 1962.

Mother Angelica is the founder of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) and hosted a show on it "Mother Angelica Live" from 1983 to 2001.

Following what some considered a scandalous World Youth Day '93 in Denver, Colorado (Catholic Church's world-wide event), Mother Angelica and her nuns return to wearing their traditional habits on Christmas Eve, 24 Dec 1993. In the following year Mother also institutes previously abandoned cloister practices such as the stating of faults, strict silence, prostration during the Consecration at Mass, and more. Mother herself begins to spend three hours a day in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament.

On 29 Jan 1998 following praying the rosary the previous day with Paola Albertini, an Italian mystic, Mother Angelica begins to walk without her braces. Three physicians independently examine her and find the healing is real.

Recovering from 2 strokes suffered since late 2001.

Is Mother Superior at Our Lady of the Angels Monastary in Irondale, Alabama. [2004]

On 4 Oct 2009 Mother Angelica receives the papal medal (Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice) from Pope Benedict XVI for her distinguished service to the Catholic Church.

Mother Angelica passed away peacefully on Easter Sunday March 27, 2016 at the age of 92 at the monastery from complications due to the stroke she had 14 years prior.