Mother Angelica, American Poor Clares nun, Died at 92

Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation, birthname Rita Antoinette Rizzo was born on April 20, 1923, and died on March 27, 2016.

She was an American Franciscan nun.

She was best known as a television personality and the founder of the internationally-broadcast cable television network Eternal Word Television Network.

During 1944, Mother Mary entered the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, a Franciscan religious order for women as a postulant, and a year later she was admitted to the order as a novice.

Mother Mary found a new house for the order in 1962 in Irondale, Alabama, and in 1996, she initiated the building of the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament and Our Lady of the Angels monastery in Hanceville, Alabama.

During 1981 Mother Angelica began broadcasting religious programmes from a converted garage in Birmingham, Alabama, and over the next twenty years developed a media network which included radio, TV, and internet channels as well as printed media.

However, Mother Angelica hosted shows on EWTN until she suffered a stroke in 2001.

Rita Antoinette Rizzo received the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice Award granted by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 and lived in the cloistered monastery in Hanceville until her death on March 27, 2016, Easter Sunday.

Mother Angelica passed away at 92 yrs old.