Friday, March 27, 2026

0:00It is the 27th of March, 2026. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. I'm Dan, fanforis. Listeners to this show may know of my fascination with sister Amy Simpel McPherson, that eccentric four square minister and radio pioneer in Los Angeles in the 20s and 30s. What if I told you that sister Amy had a Catholic sister who became a mother whose life had striking parallels in the second half of the century but based out of Alabama. She was Rita Rizzo born in Canton, Ohio in 1923 to May and John Rizzo, growing up in poverty and being shuffled between grandparents, her parents divorced when she was six.

1:01Her early life was characterized by the poverty of Canton with its mixed communities and organized crime. She was a poor student but a major ret who made money teaching baton twirling until a stomach ailment forced her to quit. When doctors couldn't help she turned to a local mystic who instructed her to pray a novena to St. Teresa of Lesoux. On her healing she decided to join the order of the poor clairs of perpetual adoration in nearby Cleveland. Rita Rizzo would take the name Sister Mary Angelica of the Annunciation. She would later become mother Angelica and she took her solemn profession at the Sancta Clara Monastery in her native Canton in 1953. It was there that she suffered an accident with an electric floor scrubbing machine that almost left her paralyzed. Needing a spinal fusion she prayed to God and promised to found a new monastery in the south if she was healed.

2:02Upon successful surgery she worked with Archbishop Thomas Toulin of the Archdiocese of Mobile to found a monastery in the south for the underserved African-American population. She had been inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. despite the Antipathy for Catholics still in the south. From 1959 she began a company, St. Peter's fishing lures to make profit enough to purchase a two bedroom house and 15 acre property in Irondale, Alabama just outside Birmingham. This would become our Lady of the Angels monastery dedicated in 1962. From the monastery now mother Angelica would begin parlor conversations on faith and life. These were recorded and sold as 45 RPM records. Despite being cloistered she began to teach outside the monastery and her recordings became a popular Sunday morning radio program. She began filming her show for CBS but when she became dissatisfied with their general

3:06programming she decided that she would launch her own television station. In the midst of the late 70s satellite explosion she was able to procure a dish, set up a studio in a garage at the monastery and in 1981 officially launched EWTN, Eternal Word Television Network. From 60,000 homes receiving 4 hours of daily airtime it is now one of the largest Catholic media outlets in the world reaching some 435 million people in over 160 countries. She found a fan and patron in Pope John Paul II whose own theological and political views roughly mirrored her own. John Paul II praised the station as the next stage in world evangelization and mother Mary would eventually move her sisters into a new site, the new shrine of the most blessed sacrament in Hansville, Alabama.

4:06As a media figure a Catholic in the south a woman a John Paul partisan and critic of some of Vatican II she was obviously going to become something of a lightning rod. In the 1990s she criticized Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles and made a forced and arguably weak apology on air to him. EWTN and Mother Angelico were becoming something of a thorn in the side of some Catholics and this would be a problem in a church with distinct levels of authority. There are definite parallels with the fundamentalist movement and media that the Catholic church would now find itself in the midst of. In 2001 Mother Angelica had a major stroke and divested herself and the monastery from leadership at the network. Increasingly unwell she spent the last years of her life at that monastery in Hansville, taking visitors until her death on Easter Sunday in 2016 which was on this, the 27th

5:07of March. EWTN has a parallel in TBN and other evangelical broadcasters in the parallel with another celebrity sister gives us one more glimpse at the tumultuous 20th century and how various churches in America navigated them and the new media landscape. Rita Rizzo, Mother Mary Angelica, was 92 years old. The last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Philippians 1. Ford to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me, yet what shall I choose? I do not know, I am torn between the two. I desire to depart and be with Christ which is better by far, but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. Most of this I know that I will remain and I will continue with all of you for your

6:08progress and joy in the faith so that through my being with you again, your boasting in Christ Jesus will abound on account of me. This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 27th of March, 2026, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. This show is produced by man whose favorite Rizzo's include Rita, Greece's Betty Rizzo and the Muppets Rizzo the Rat. He is Christ for Gillespie. The show is written and read by man who reminds you that stockered Channing was 33 years old when cast as the high school aged Betty Rizzo in that possibly overrated musical I'm Dan Van Vores. You can catch us here every day and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and redemption of all things are true. Everything is going to be okay.