Mother Angelica: The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles - Paperback

by Raymond Arroyo (Author)

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - "In this dramatic page-turner, Raymond Arroyo has captured the life and lessons of Mother Angelica, a woman who may well be the patron saint of CEOs."--Lee Iacocca, The Iacocca Family Foundation, former CEO of the Chrysler Corporation

In 1981, a simple nun, using merely her entrepreneurial instincts and two hundred dollars, launched what would become the world's largest religious media empire. In the garage of a Birmingham, Alabama, monastery, the Eternal Word Television Network grew at a staggering pace under her guidance. Mother Angelica (1923-2016) remains on the air, offering faith-filled advice, hope, and laughter to her audience through rebroadcasts of her original homilies. Raymond Arroyo, through more than five years of exclusive interviews with Mother Angelica, traces her tortuous rise to success and exposes for the first time the fierce opposition she faced, both outside and inside her church.

Front Jacket

In 1981, the year after Ted Turner founded CNN, a simple nun launched the world's first Catholic cable channel in the garage of a Birmingham, Alabama, monastery, using her entrepreneurial instincts and $200 for seed money. Under her guidance, the Eternal Word Television Network grew by leaps and bounds. Today, EWTN offers twenty-four-hour television programming and AM/FM radio broadcasts in both English and Spanish, reaching more than 184 million viewers and listeners in 160 countries.
Raymond Arroyo's engrossing biography, reads like a novel. Born Rita Rizzo in Canton, Ohio, in 1923, she was abandoned by her father and raised in poverty by a mother who suffered suicidal depressions. As a young woman, Rita developed severe abdominal pain and large protrusions. After doctors dismissed the problems as a "nervous" condition, Rita sought the prayers of a local mystic, and her symptoms disappeared.
Awakened to the power of prayer, she vowed to dedicate her life to God. She became a cloistered nun, expecting to spend her life hidden from the world. But her faith compelled her to unlikely endeavors, from establishing a monastery in Alabama to starting the network. Relying solely on "God's providence," Mother Angelica built the empire without concern for budgets or fund-raising campaigns. She had accomplished what the highest echelon of the Catholic Church had been unable to do.

Author Biography

Raymond Arroyo is a New York Times bestselling author, an award-winning producer, and a broadcaster. He is a Fox News contributor and a regular on the top-rated show The Ingraham Angle. As founding director at EWTN News and host of the international newsmagazine The World Over Live, he is seen in more than 350 million households around the world each week. Arroyo's writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, National Review, Financial Times, and other publications.