Feisty founder of EWTN has "suffered a great deal" in the past few monthsHANCEVILLE, Ala. (ChurchMilitant.com) - Mother Angelica, founder of the first Catholic television network, is now on a feeding tube. The winter bulletin from Our Lady of the Angels Monastery, where Mother Angelica is prioress, reveals that her condition has declined and "Mother has suffered a great deal these past months."
She suffered multiple strokes in 2001 after stepping down from leading the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) the year before. Since then she's been convalescing in at the monastery in Hanceville, Alabama, under the care of her fellow nuns. She is 92 years old and celebrated her 70th year in religious life last year.
She started EWTN in 1981, and with her charism, made it the biggest Catholic television network, broadcasting to over 150 countries worldwide. She's most well known for her show Mother Angelica Live, where she spoke frankly on various topics, interviewed guests and answered mail and phone calls.
She was known as the orthodox voice for Catholics in the 1990s. In 1993 she became infuriated when at World Youth Day, a woman played the part of Our Lord in the Stations of the Cross. She released a video called The Hidden Agenda blasting priests and bishops who were dissenting from the Church. She even commented that the modern habit her nuns wore was a "compromise" and afterwards reverted to the use of the traditional habit. She was denounced by bishops like Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee, a notorious active homosexual, and others who tried to get her shows off the air and have her punished by Rome.
In 1995 she is alleged to have seen the Child Jesus while on a mission to Bogota, Colombia, and He asked her to "build a temple" in His honor. The Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament was built close to the monastery in Hanceville and consecrated in 1999. They offer daily Mass and have perpetual Eucharistic adoration.
