April 23, 2025 • 47 mins
Who was the first woman in broadcast history to found and lead her own cable network? It wasn’t Oprah—it was a cloistered nun named Mother Angelica. In this powerful episode, Raymond Arroyo takes you on a deeply personal journey through the miraculous life of a woman who defied all odds to build the largest religious media network in the world.
Through faith, humor, and relentless trust in divine providence, Mother Angelica became a spiritual trailblazer, a media pioneer, and an unlikely icon. You’ll hear remarkable stories of healing, risk, and resilience—stories Raymond witnessed firsthand as her biographer and close friend. From her childhood struggles in a broken home, to a life-changing miracle that led her to God, to the moment she stared down CBS executives and declared she’d build her own studio, this is the story of a woman who truly did the ridiculous so God could do the miraculous.
Whether you’re in need of encouragement, curious about the power of prayer, or simply want to meet a woman who changed the world by saying “yes” to God, this episode will leave a lasting impression.
🔔 Subscribe for more inspiring conversations: Arroyo Grande, available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, and everywhere you listen, watch & stream.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Who is the first woman in the history of broadcasts
to found and lead her own cable network for twenty years.
On this Arroyo Grande, I'm not only going to introduce
her to her the miracles of her life, but I'll
share the secrets of her amazing success which you can
apply to your own life. Come on, I'm Raymond Arroyo.
(00:30):
Welcome to Arroyo Grande. Go subscribe to the show right now.
Turn notifications on so you know what's coming, and boy
do we have some big things coming. Stay tuned now.
You all saw that Blue Origin space capsule that went
up to the edge of space with an all female crew.
They got some insane media coverage and the whole flight
was eleven minutes long. Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, of course,
(00:52):
were the first women to run for president. They were lauded.
But do you know who the first woman in the
history of broadcasts you found and lead her own cable
network was. If you're thinking Oprah, you're wrong. She did
it long before Oprah in nineteen eighty one. And she
was a nun, This nun mother Mary Angelica. So many
(01:15):
people have seen her reruns. You might have run across
her on the Eternal Word television network, which she founded,
the largest religious media empire on the planet. But despite
your familiarity with her, her story almost dwarfs her accomplishments.
In this episode, I'm going to tell you about the
many miracles that surfaced in her life, how she accomplished
(01:37):
her mighty mission, and how you can incorporate her secrets
of success into your own life. Now, Mother Mary Angelica
is not somebody I read about in a few books
and decided to do a show on. I literally wrote
the book or books, as the case may be, on
her life, her biography, Mother Angelica, the remarkable story of
a nun, her nerve, and a network of miracles. I
(01:59):
edited three books of her wisdom and her prayers, and
I wrote the final word on her life, her Grand Silence,
The Last Years and living Legacy of Mother Angelica. She
was also a beloved mentor, a friend of mine. Her
birthday falls on April twentieth, and she left us on
the eve of Easter in twenty sixteen. So I thought
(02:20):
this would be the perfect Easter episode. It's inspiring, it's uplifting,
and I think it'll change your life. So stay with it.
As I was collecting material for the biography of Mother Angelica.
I'll never forget a cardinal in Rome without solicitation. At
a dinner, shared the following story with me, and though
it's now an impossibility, this is what he said, he said,
(02:42):
John Paul. The second, Mother Teresa and Mother Angelica die
on the same day, but their mansions were still under construction.
So Saint Peter said, look, I hate to do this
to you three, but I have a little problem. We
just don't have the occupancy yet. We're building your mansions
and they're really big. They're taking extra time and staff,
so we're going to send you all to Hell, which
(03:03):
they did well. About two days later, Satan comes banging
on the pearly gates. Hey, Peter, get over here, come here,
come here. We got problems downstairs. He said, Well, what's
the problem, he said, Well, this John Paul is second.
I'm losing clients hand over fist. Every time somebody arrives,
he forgives them and shoe. They're out of there. And
then you got this Mother Teresa. Every time I hit
(03:25):
somebody with a boil, she heals them. I cut their
head off, she puts it back on. This woman's nothing
but trouble. But this Angelica, she's the worst, Satan says,
and Saint Peter says, well, what is she doing. She's
taken up a collection, she's installed central cooling. Get her
out of here. Now, that's kind of a cute, funny story,
(03:47):
but it's also grossly reductive. Now, some would prefer to
have us believe that caricature of this nun and file
mother Angelica Away is really nothing more than a good fundraiser,
But I think they're missing the point. In reality, Angelica
was a determined visionary, a simple woman with a broken
heart and a shattered body called to do great things.
(04:09):
She was an unlikely spiritual leader and innovator, a true believer,
and I think an inspiring example for all of us.
Many puzzle over her success. How did this woman of
all people become the founder and leading light of what
is today the largest religious media empire on the planet,
(04:30):
reaching more than one hundred million households on TV alone.
How did she become the first woman in the history
a broadcast to found not only a non for profit
television station, but she became the standard, the standard bearer
of traditional Catholicism. I can tell you this much She
(04:51):
didn't plan any of it. Mother didn't plan anything at all. Actually,
she relied on providence to be her guide. I'm getting
a little ahead of my But on the surface, she
was nothing special. She was plain looking on the plump side,
not especially brilliant. She was born in a crime ridden
Italian ghetto in Ohio in nineteen twenty three, a place
(05:13):
better known for its prostitutes and mafia slayings than its saints.
Rita Rizzo came into the world unwelcomed and unwanted, at
least by her father. I discovered that when her dad,
John Rizzo, learned of his daughter's coming, he flew into
a rage, and he physically assaulted his wife. Before she
ever arrived, Rita had already been rejected, but that rejection
(05:38):
and the hard circumstances of her unstable family life created
a fusion that would produce the woman who would later
become Mother Angelica. Long before I began this project, by
the way, I was struck by the unlikeliness of this
woman as a leader. She had everything going against her.
She was poor her formal education and stopped at high school.
(06:01):
She failed her junior year. She had an emotionally unstable
and suicidal mother, a nervous condition, stomach problems. No betting
man would have placed money on this woman succeeding. But oddly,
it was the pain, the physical setbacks that really illuminated
(06:21):
her path and showed her the way, which is one
of the first lessons of Mother Angelica's life. One of
the lessons it reveals perverse as it sounds, stay with me.
Pain can be instructive, it can be useful and at
times very powerful. The sting of pain was present from
(06:42):
the beginning in Rita's life, like a watchful friend. Early on,
she experienced a heartache common to too many women. At five,
Rita and her mother were abandoned by her father and
left to fend for themselves. Well, Rita's nerves produced stomach abnormalities,
and they took her to and they could never figure
out what was going on. She was diagnosed with something
(07:05):
called potosis of the stomach. It was impossible for her
to keep food down, so, searching for relief, Rita's mother
takes her to the home of a local mystic in Canton, Ohio,
a woman named Rhoda Wise. She was a stigmatic who
claimed to have had visions of Jesus and the saints
(07:26):
and even conversed with them. She would suffer Christ's passion
on Fridays. Now this is bizarre. When I saw these images,
I thought, what is this? But she would bleed profusely
from her head, her hands, and her feet on Fridays,
and the local papers attributed healing powers to this woman.
(07:47):
Thousands of people would stand outside her house. I mean,
there are lots of local reportage of this stuff at
the time. Well, when Rita came to missus Wise, the
Stigmatic merely instructed Rita to pray a novena nine days
of prayer to Saint Teres for a cure. That's all
she did, gave her a prayer card and sent her
(08:07):
on her way. Nine days later, little Rita wakes up
with the feeling that her stomach had been cured, and
indeed it had been. It was the pivotal event that
revealed God's love for it was for her miraculous. For
the first time in her life, she knew she had
a father in heaven, if not on earth, who was
(08:30):
concerned about her future and her life. Shortly thereafter, she
fell in love with God and she entered religious life.
Now I mentioned Rhodea Wise, the stigmatic, the mystic for
a couple of reasons. She was the first person to
show Mother Angelica that pain could redeem, that pain was
(08:50):
sometimes sent by God to his beloved ones, and that
suffering offered up to God could produce astounding results. Just
as importantly, rode Wise's supernatural sufferings made Christ's passion real.
For Rita, rode Wise's life was proof that Jesus wasn't
(09:11):
a concept or a theory or a picture on the wall,
but a living God, a real person who manifested himself
through lives in real time today, and Rita would never
forget that lesson. She learned to love God in a
radical way, and look, it is a radical path. She
(09:31):
trusted him completely, allowing his providence to take her to
places she could not have imagined, uncomfortable places, places she
didn't necessarily always want to go. You know, Mother never
intended to start a television network, that's for sure. She
often said, everything evolved. I mean, isn't that how it
always happens? Everything evolves. Let me tell you how the
(09:53):
network began, and really how she was set on the
path to create what became this enormous religious Empire in
the media. In the early nineteen fifties, Sister Angelica was
mopping a monastery hallway when she slipped, aggravating a birth
defect in her back and surgery was needed. Well the
(10:16):
night before the operation, the doctor came in and he said, look,
you've got a fifty to fifty chance of walking again.
Good night. So when he left, she made a desperate
deal with God. She said, if you let me walk again,
I will build you a monastery in the South. Now
why she chose the South had been a mystery for decades.
(10:39):
I cracked it. It's in the biography of Mother Angelica,
but I'll tell you about that another time. Anyway, she
did walk again with the aid of crutches and a
back and a leg brace, leading her to comment later,
when you make a deal with God, be very specific,
and that's good advice. Mother eventually built the monastery in
(11:01):
the buckle of the Bible Belt Birmingham, Alabama, where Catholics
constituted about two percent of the populace. So to raise
funds and awareness for the community. In the early nineteen sixties,
the local bishop allowed Mother Angelica to visit churches in Birmingham.
Social groups just to raise awareness and introduce them to
(11:23):
the concept of a cloistered group of nuns who just
spent their lives in prayer, hidden away from the world.
So she gave lectures all over town and that led
to a Bible study in her monastery parlor for a
group of Episcopalian ladies initially, and they encouraged her to
write mini books to capture some of her wisdom and
(11:45):
guidance on the spiritual life. So she wrote these little
mini books. She would just write them in her chapel.
They were maybe twenty thirty pages apiece. And from there
she was invited to speak to charismatic gatherings and other
conferences all over the country. She was captivating, i have
to say, and a lot of fun. And the ladies
in the group and the people she was speaking to
(12:06):
said you've got to record this for television. Mother. Well,
she decided to do just that. She did a series
for CBN. Pat Robertson invited her to do a series
on the Bible, really her just flipping through the gospels
and riffing on them if you will. Well, it was
while shooting her second series it was called in His
(12:26):
Sandals for CBN that she became aware of a CBS
mini series entitled The Word. Now, the Word was based
on an Irving Wallace novel by the same name, and
the story contended that an ancient scroll had been discovered
which proved that Jesus was a fraud. Well, let's say
Mother was a little perturbed by that idea, and then
(12:49):
she realized that she was shooting her series at the
Birmingham CBS affiliate. Well, she decided to stand her ground
and go make a fuss about this miniseries. So she
marched into the studio demanded to see the manager, a
guy named Hugh Smith. I interviewed him for the biography. Well,
(13:10):
this poor country selicme's waddling out and he says, now, Mother,
calmed down, calm down, what's up? What's going on? And
she says, your network is going to show a movie
called The Word and it is blasphemous to our lord.
And he says, I haven't heard anything about it, mother,
And she says, I don't care what you've heard. There
is no way I'm going to do this show here
(13:32):
if you continue to air that mini series. And poor
Hughes Smith says, well, we've had no complaints. Mother, you're
calm down. Nobody else is complaining about this, and she said,
it's going to confuse the people. And he said, are
you telling me how to run my station? She said no,
I think you have crimey programs, but I've never told
(13:53):
you how to run your station. But this is blasphemy. Well,
now her arms are crossed, her eyes are narrow, and
she asks him, are you a Christian? He said, yes, ma'am,
But do you think God cares what we air down
here at the Birmingham CBS affiliate. And she said, yes,
he cares, and I care. And if you air this thing,
(14:14):
I will no longer record my programs here and you
won't be able to broadcast them on this network. Well,
he said, lady, you leave here and you're off television.
You need us. She said, I don't need you. I
only need God. I'll buy my own cameras and build
my own studio. He said you can't do that. She said,
(14:38):
you just watch me, And with that she gathered up
her set pieces or rocking chair or bible, threw them
in the back of an Impala and she drove home. Well,
when she got there, she had to admit that Smith
was probably right. She didn't know where she was going
to shoot her program, and this was probably the end
of her television career. But I love this about not
(15:00):
only her story, but Mother herself, because it demonstrates Mother
Angelica's total trust in God, who, in her case, took
even her failures and turned them into something wonderful. Mother
was always receptive to God's promptings, and at that point,
the sisters reminded her her nuns of the uncompleted garage
(15:22):
in the monastery backyard, so she went out there. They
were still laying the foundation, and she instructed the builder
to expand his design and build her a TV studio there.
It is interesting, however, that when she got around to
naming her network, you know, she named it the Eternal
word Television network, almost as a protest against that miniseries,
(15:47):
the word that was the catalyst for the whole thing.
But the moral of the story is this, sometimes standing
on principle and risking everything is the only way to
realize what God intends for you. Mother Angelica was fifty
eight years old when she took the church and her
monastery into cable television, a woman with a bloate at
(16:10):
heart diabetes, a twisted spine, a lame leg, and literally
two hundred dollars in the bank. Still she went forward.
When I asked her about this time, she said, the
need we have for assurance and the absolute lack of
willingness to take a risk for God is appalling to me.
She said, I'm sure our Lord asked a lot of
(16:32):
people to build a network. There has to be a
reason that he chose a few nuns who didn't know anything,
in the wrong state of life with no money. Because
it goes against reason. Some people say I'm a woman
of great faith. I'm really a coward who keeps moving forward.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
She told me questioned, Nuns in television is without question,
one of the most ridiculous things that could have ever happened.
It just evolved. When I went to China thirty eight
in Chicago, I walked in that little, tiny, tiny studio
that I had never seen a studio or TV studio before.
We had already been publicizing books for a couple of years,
(17:13):
reaching a lot of people. I remember standing in the
doorway and saying, it doesn't take much to reach the masses,
And I said, Lord.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
I've got to have one of these.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
And I thought after I said that what would you
do with it?
Speaker 4 (17:28):
Dummy?
Speaker 2 (17:28):
You know, what would you do with something like this?
But I got this in my mind. I couldn't get
it out.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Mother practiced what she called a theology of risk. Mother
never hesitated. When she felt God was calling her to something,
leading her to something, she ran after it. So many
of us worry, what are people going to think? We
become hamstrung by the possibility of failure, so we stay
right where we are, regardless of what we're being inspired
(17:56):
to do. A call to do and Mother used to say,
God is looking for Dodos. There are lots of people
out there who know it can't be done, so they
don't do it. But a Dodo doesn't know it can't
be done. God uses Dodos, and I'm a Dodo. She said, Okay,
here's a quick Dodo story. I love this story. It's amazing.
(18:19):
When Mother Angelica needed to purchase her first satellite dish
in nineteen eighty one, she called an RCA executive. Okay,
and I interviewed this man when I was working on
the biography. She went down the phone book and there
was only one manufacturer at the time building these enormous
satellite discs that you needed if you were going to
(18:39):
broadcast a signal into the skies, into space and then
they go back down to your homes. And those satellites
at the time were about two million dollars plus. She
calls this guy and she went down the list. She
was looking for any vice president whose name ended in A,
I or O. She was looking for an Italian whose
arms she could twist like the guy in the neighborhood.
(19:01):
So anyway, she finally gets this RCAA vice president on
the phone. I interviewed the poor man. He said, talking
to Mother Angelica was like going nine rounds with Joe Frasier.
You know. She kept coming at you. And she said, hello,
this is Mother Angelica. I need one of those satellites
you sell it. And he's like, who is this? She said,
(19:22):
a Mother Angelica. I'm down in Birmingham, Alabama. I've got
this said network. I'm I bring Catholic Network, Religious Network.
We're gonna bring hope to people. But I need one
of your satellites. And he said, well, do you have
two point five million dollars that's the cost of the satellite.
She said, well, sweetheart, that's why I'm calling you. Well,
this went back and forth for a while. Finally the
(19:42):
guy after I think he was just bullied and beaten.
He said, look, lo, lord, I can't just give you
the satellite, but what I can do is order it
for you, and if you can make a down payment
at the time of delivery of six hundred thousand dollars,
then they'll unload the equipment. But unless you give the
man a certified check for six hundred thousand dollars, not
(20:02):
a piece of equipment comes up the truck. Do you understand, Yes, sir,
do you think you can get that kind of money?
The Lord has all the money in the world. God
bless you. She hangs up the phone. Well, three weeks later,
here comes the two flat beds with all the RCAA
satellite equipment on it, and she is beaming. She's like,
you know, a mother waiting for her child. She's excited,
(20:23):
and the nuns are there just to paint the picture.
These are a group of nuns in Birmingham, Alabama. Irondale, Alabama,
probably best known for Fanny Flag books. You know, the
Fried Green Tomato books. That's the same town where Mother
Angelica and her nuns live. But this is rustic. They're
on the side of a hill. You know. She's got
like a chain link fence with sheep and goats running
(20:44):
around and a chapel in the middle of the place.
That's it. There's nothing happening there. So here comes as
RCAA satellite and the man gets off and says, are
you mother, Angelica? We need you to sign for this. Well,
she goes to sign and he says, do you have
the check? It says you need a check for six
hundred thousand dollars before I can unload anything. And she goes,
wait right here. Mother takes her crutches and goes into
(21:08):
the chapel. She kneels. Now, you husbands will love this
part of the story. She kneels down, and she looks
up at her spouse, the Lord and the blessed sacrament,
and she says, where your satellites outside? You wanted this thing,
you'd say I ordered it. Now the man, I guess
he's looking for payments. So this is your satellites, waited.
(21:30):
I don't need it, but you wanted it, so here
it is, and it's time to pay. I guess. She
expected the money to fall from the ceiling, which it
did not. Do by the way that day. But what
I love about this is when Mother Angelica reached a
brick wall. This is another great lesson from her life.
I watch this happen so many times. She would be
inspired to do something, but when she hit a brick wall,
(21:52):
as she did that day, she would drop it like
a hot rock, like it never happened. And in that moment,
she got up on her crutches. She walked out of
the chap and she was determined to turn the delivery
away because this must have been her inspiration, her will,
not God's. And as she was talking to the delivery man,
one of the nuns came running over from the monastery,
(22:14):
a woman named Sister Emmanuel. She's still there by the way,
and she said, Mother, there's a man on the phone.
It's an emergency. He really needs to talk to you.
He won't get off the phone. He's called us multiple times.
Could you please come talk to him. She said, Jesus,
Mary and Joseph's sister. I got big business here, and
she said, but I know that, but this man, he
won't get up the phone. He says it's an emergency,
he needs to talk to you. I'll only talk to
you okay, give me a second, sweetheart, she tells the
(22:35):
delivery man. She goes back into the monastery picks up
the phone. It's a guy calling from the Bahamas. He
had read her many books many years ago, remember those
from the seventies, Almost a decade ago. He had read
one of her many books. He had been inspired, converted,
changed his life, got off of drugs, reconciled with his family,
and for the last six months he had been trying
(22:57):
to get in touch with Mother Angelica because he wanted
to write a donation to her book ministry, a donation
of six hundred thousand dollars. Can you send it right now?
She said, well, that day, I didn't believe this story.
By the way, when I heard it, she went through
every bit of it. But I ended up going to
South Trust, which was the local bank at the time.
(23:20):
That was where she did her banking. I pulled the
records and there, in black and white was the six
hundred thousand dollars donation that the guy wired into account.
That was the down payment for the satellite that to
this moment broadcast EWTN in North and South America, and
a great testament to her faith to the very end
(23:44):
to the bitter end.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
You know.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Mother would always say God is good, but he's slow.
That's a good example of it. She continuously embraced that
next risk for God. Mother Angelica lived in what she
called the present moment. It is, I believe, one of
the main reasons for her success. She explained it to
me this way, what is God calling you to do now?
(24:10):
In this present moment, now, yesterday, tomorrow, right now. God's
will is manifested to us in the duties and experiences
of the present moment. We have only to accept them
and try to be like Jesus in them now. As
you can imagine, this spared her many a worry about
the future and allowed Angelica to go where angels feared
(24:32):
to tread. Oh, she went there too. Now. No one
saw Mother Angelica coming. She was a complete surprise. I mean,
had certain church officials realize what Mother Angelica and her
network would become, she might well have been ecclesial road
killed by the end of the first week. A man
they might have seen coming. But a woman, an aged
(24:53):
nun with a quick mouth and a grandmotherly manner, answerable
only to the Pope, completely surprised these guys They didn't
know what to do with her. She looked so harmless,
you know. Most of the church bureaucracy considered her a
rube who would quickly fail. But that too was part
of her success. They underestimated her. She was like God's
(25:14):
little trojan horse on crutches. It's always the simple ones
that God chooses, the humble. Former Pope Benedict the sixteenth
marvel at how God seems to call the little, the
simple to shape the culture and carry the truth into
our time. And Mother may well be one of those people,
(25:35):
you know. I was originally going to title her biography
to Confound the Wise The Unexpected Life of Mother Angelica
from that great line in Corinthians. God chooses the lowli
to confound the wise, and the weak to confound the strong. Unfortunately,
not everyone enjoys being confounded, which often put Mother on
a collision course with some in the hierarchy. She fell
(25:56):
into television in nineteen eighty one, a year before the
Bishop's Conference launched its own ill fated Catholic Telecommunications Network
of America, their own cable system. By the time the
bishops launched in nineteen eighty two, they found their planes
spoken streetwise, none had beaten them to the punch. Mother
(26:17):
was already an established on air presence, and she was
connecting with wide audiences across the country. Lacking viewers and
sufficient funds, the Bishop's network eventually dissolved divine providence anyone.
This partially explains why Mother Angelica had, shall we say,
(26:37):
a difficult relationship with the Bishop's Conference and certain bishops.
Then there was that tiny issue of orthodoxy. You see, Mother,
from the earliest days refused to air descent on her network,
no matter who that descent came from, including bishops. One
day in nineteen eighty eight, a priest who worked for
the Bishop's Conference called Mother to insist that she aired
(27:00):
interviews with any bishop who wished to be on her network,
regardless of their orthodoxy.
Speaker 5 (27:07):
Why don't you air these people? And I said no,
and I don't think they're Catherine. He says, by what
right do you have to say that?
Speaker 3 (27:21):
I said, I owned a network, and he said you
won't always be there, and I said, I'll blow the
damn thing up before you get your hands on it.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
So they caught you on a good day, Yeah, a
good day. Now, some clergymen have criticized Mother Angelica. Pointing
to her brashness, her simplistic theology, some have called her
names and ridiculed her. That's unfortunate. Mother Angelica never set
out to lead the church. She fell into the role
by default. People listened to Mother Angelica because of the
(28:15):
directness of her message or humor as you heard, her
natural ability to tell a story, and most importantly, the
soundness of her teaching. She was standing on top of
two thousand years of church teaching, and they thirsted for
Orthodoxy for devotions, and she gave it to them when
others wouldn't. Had those critical members of the clergy been
(28:38):
doing their job, had they been bringing a message of
hope and truth and hard truth to the common man,
maybe God would not have chosen a cloistered none to
do this television work. As I told an archbishop once,
was mystified by Mother Angelica's hold on people. I told him,
when the bishops regained their moral voice and shake off
(29:00):
their timidity, Mother Angelica will cease to exist. She filled
a leadership vacuum in the church. Mother never intended to
lead anybody. She would be the first to admit she's
no theologian. She certainly wasn't looking to be one. She
had many faults which she recognized, and you know that
I think also is part of her appeal. She was
(29:20):
look She was like a podcaster before there was podcasting,
and she was authentic long before people caught the authenticity wave.
In her humanity, people saw themselves and that gave them hope.
Mother could be tempestuous. She was quick to anger, suspicious.
There's a funny story, one of the nuns told me. Maybe, well,
(29:43):
I'll tell it. It doesn't give you a little insight
in Derek character. Sister Gabriel is a little Vietnamese nun
in Mother Angelica's order. She's still there, and when she
first came to the monastery her English was not so great.
Her English instructor told her, whenever someone asked you question,
you always have the option to answer yes or no.
(30:05):
So to ease her into religious life, Mother Angelica phrased
commands to Sister Gabriel as questions. So Mother said, would
you like to clean the hall? Sweet high Well Gabriel
thought about it for a moment. She knew she had
a choice. She considered it and she said, no, my
(30:26):
choice is no. I wouldn't like to do it well
to make herself perfectly clear. At that point, Mother Angelica
stood at her full height, appropriately modulated her voice and barked,
just do it, damn it. You know. One of the
most important things she taught me is that saints are
not perfect. They're just trying to be perfect. Mother's weaknesses
(30:51):
and her flaws were always in evidence. Some of them
sprang from her terrible childhood, which could easily derailed her life.
But the glory of Angelicas is that God used even
her weaknesses for his own ends. She talked about this
in her very first television broadcast, and I think it
applies to all of us, on a show entitled Our Hermitage.
(31:14):
Remember she was doing this for CBN. She talked about
the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes, and she said,
have you ever wondered what happened to those scraps after
Jesus took them and filled those twelve baskets? She said,
I've bet those apostles ate those scraps for months. Most
of you take the scraps of your life and you
(31:34):
permit them to poor guilt on your poor souls, of resentment,
of regret, and you live in those regrets and you
live in that guilt. I wish I'd never felt angry
or distressed, but I have. But I know that Jesus
is going to take the scraps of my life and
your life, and he will make something so beautiful. If
(31:57):
you have anything in your past that you saw sorry
for that seems to be keeping you back and making
you more miserable and unhappy, let the Lord pick up
those scraps. And that's just what she did. She let
God pick up the scraps every day. And she also
bet everything on God, which brings us to the quintessential
(32:18):
Mother Angelica principle. Get your pencils ready, do the ridiculous
so God can do the miraculous. She would say, time
and time again. She would prove that dictum to be true.
One day, in nineteen eighty eight, she was determined to retire.
The network was on solid footing. She had launched the thing.
She accomplished what she had been asked to do. So,
(32:40):
while in prayer, she shared her retirement plans with God.
Mother relayed the conversation to me. She said, Lord, I
want to pull back a little bit from the network. No,
she felt God tell her, I want you to begin
a shortwave radio network. Lord, I don't know anything about
short wave, she said, I know. Begin He told her.
(33:04):
She really didn't understand the order at all. But she
pressed forward, not always easily. Mother never hesitated. You'll remember,
I told you earlier when she felt she was being
led to something, when she felt God was leading her,
she would go for it. Where most of us dismissed
those tiny inspirations, Angelica hung on for dear life, and
(33:24):
she rode them to their completion. Five years after that
prayerful dialogue, Mother Angelica was owner of the only privately
held shortwave network in the world, which cost more than
thirty five million dollars to bring into being. She truly
did the ridiculous so God could do the miraculous. Now,
(33:46):
all this might seem crazy to some, miraculous to others,
but crazy to some. And people will no doubt say,
and I hear you, how did she know this was
God speaking to her? Now? Not even Mother Angelica can
prove that, and I'm not going to try either. But
there is one thing we should take note of. In
practically every case, the things she was asked to build materialized,
(34:11):
and they did so in extraordinary ways. That evidence is
hard to dismiss. And the other thing I promised in
the title was her extraordinary foundation of prayer. This is
a woman who was a cloistered nun. She spent a
few hours a day before God in the blessed sacrament,
that's the consecrated host in her chapel. Every day she
(34:33):
would kneel down and she would pray. She would meditate
over the scripture quietly in silence for hours, and she
imaginatively put herself in the middle of the gospel stories
and during that moment, during those times, she discovered incredible lessons.
And I would argue it was from the fullness of
(34:54):
that prayer, that meditation, which she called her secret weapon,
that prayer that everything sprang her on air teachings, her
advice to callers, her split second decisions are where to
take this multimillion dollar corporation. The prayer quiet with God
allowed her time to hear his voice and trust him
(35:17):
to guide her steps. She was also a big believer
in divine providence. You know that is that's the idea
that God provides all you need, all you have to
do is trust Him. Easier said than done. When I
asked her what she meant by divine providence. She told
me this, and it's in Mother Angelica's little Book of
(35:38):
Life Lessons, that's a collection of her wisdom. She said,
there's a scary thing about God's providence. If you don't go,
he won't go. In every instance, God waited on his
apostles to step out in faith, not knowing what was
coming next. And this is where we failed today. We've
been brainwashed, she said, to believe that. We first have
(36:01):
to have a goal. Then we have to find a committee.
Then we have to have meetings, then we have a
fun drive, and then we must get qualified people in
a budget, and then you can begin to do something
for the Lord. Sweetheart, by that time, you've forgotten what
you started out to do. But because she was in
constant prayer and she was providence sometimes turned up in
(36:25):
unpleasant ways. I have to say Mother didn't court controversy,
but it often found her because when she saw something
that violated her principles or her faith, you can bet
she was going to speak out against it. Now, some
would say, don't rock the boat, just be quiet, bide
your time. Mother didn't operate that way. Case in point.
(36:49):
Ever since Vatican two, ideological divisions have splintered the church.
There were progressives wanting things like ordination, women loose or
more relaxed, laid back liturgies, while traditionalists in the church
craved eternal truths and timeless devotions and socralty. Well. In
nineteen ninety three, Mother Angelica broadcast Pope John Paul the
(37:12):
Second's visit to Denver one evening. During a passion play,
a female mime played the role of Jesus. Mother felt
compelled to take to the airwaves and respond.
Speaker 5 (37:27):
I'm tired. I'm tired I'm being pushed in corners. I'm
tired of your inclusive language that refuses to admit the
Son of God is a man. I'm tired of your tricks.
I'm tired of your deceit. I'm tired of you constantly
(37:49):
just making a crack and then the first thing you know,
there's a whole and all of us fall into it.
I am so tired of your liberal church in America.
Speaker 4 (38:00):
Do you see this car? We had this little modern
collar so that we would really appeal to this modern world,
this pagan society. Am I better now, but I'm being realistic.
(38:23):
We're going to change it.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
We're going to look very Roman.
Speaker 5 (38:29):
Because I make in a statement.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
There were those who worried that Mother Angelica had now
taken on the bishop's conference and blown up a papal event,
and that might be the end of her network. The
opposite happened. She was featured in newsweek, in major media,
and her counterprotest put her on the map. Viewership of
e WTN exploded. Why do you think that was? Because
(38:56):
she was outspoken, She was true to her God and
her faith, true to herself, and she stood with her audience.
And that's such an important lesson. If you're principled and
you stand with your audience, I don't care what business
you're in, the audience will stand with you, and miracles
might just happen. You might also notice Mother Angelica's lack
(39:19):
of hesitation in that clip. She once told me when
I was vacillating about something, there's a lot of things
that you can do, but you've got to do what
God asked you to do and stick to it. You
have all eternity to experience the presence of God, but
you have a very short time to do something for him,
(39:40):
So get cracking. Now is the time to act. I've
really taken that to heart. As an example from my
own life. I did not intend to write a book
or a biography, and certainly nothing as complex or time
consuming as Mother Angelica's story. I was on a retreat
in nineteen ninety nine and I received one of those
(40:01):
tiny inspirations we talked about earlier. I just a passing thought,
is all it was, and I thought maybe I should
write her story. I didn't know hidden pieces of her
tale that I felt there might be something there. So
I approached her. I asked her help. I told Mother
I could not write a definitive biography without a cooperation.
(40:23):
But and this I thought would kill the whole deal.
I told her I could not write and would not
write an authorize biography because I wanted the freedom to
investigate the story as I saw it, and editorial control
would be mine alone. She prayed about it for a while,
and she came back to me a couple of days later,
and she said, all right, let's start and see what happens.
(40:46):
She gave me total access to her community, her history,
her diaries, letters, physicians, friends, her sisters. I found the enemies.
It was an incredible journey, and I have to say
a brave one from other Angelica. I mean, think about it.
Would you let someone who had known you for several years,
seen you in good times and bad, write your life story,
(41:08):
submit yourself to all manner of questioning and interrogation for
several hours at a stretch. I'm not sure if I would.
This was a trying and instructive exercise for Mother. Once
we'd got into the swing of things, she told me,
I wish you forty years in purgatory if you sugarcoat
my life. She said, I want people to see the humanity,
(41:30):
so they realized that God did everything. We would meet
in the parlor of her monastery every Saturday for about
five to six hour sessions, interrupted only by lunch. We
moved chronologically through entire life, and I would go out
rifle through source documents in Canton, Ohio or in Rome, Birmingham,
interview people who crossed your path, and then I'd come
(41:52):
back at the end of every week and have a
new crop of questions I would throw at her. This
went on from nineteen ninety nine to November twenty eighth
of two thousand and one. On the twenty eighth, I
told her that would be our final interview, and we
covered her entire life up until that point, and the
(42:13):
last interview we talked about the future, the future of
her monastery, her life, what she saw for her community next,
what she saw for EWT in her network next, and
I would only come back to her, I said if
I needed spot interviews to fill in holes in the
writing as I went along. And a few days later
we recorded a Christmas special together and did a live
(42:35):
show together, and Mother went into her cloister for her
advent retreat. So they locked themselves away for about three
weeks before Christmas. Before going into the chapel that Christmas
Eve in two thousand and one, she told her nuns,
Jesus is coming today. I'm going to the chapel to
wait for him. He would come more quickly than she imagined.
(42:58):
Mother Angelica suffered a stroke that day in the chapel.
That morning, it limited her speech, sealed her memory. Providentially,
without my knowing it, I had captured the last testament
of Mother Angelica, the final word on her remarkable life.
What a gift she has given me and really anybody
who read that biography. Had she said no, and I
(43:20):
think about this all the time. Had she said, no,
or had I ignored that little voice in my head,
much of Mother's story would have been lost. But God's
timing his providence again. It's pretty good. It's not always easy,
but it's good if you trust it, if we're open
to it. And I have to confess I hesitated once
I began writing this work. Writing is a terrible prospect
(43:43):
for any time, but a project like this seemed so
far flung. It was daunting. Thousands of TV shows, to
wade through, more than one hundred interviews, medical records, on
and on and on. And when I shared my fears,
Mother Angelica told me this. It's great advice for anybody
who I think is hesitant about what you're doing. She said,
(44:04):
if you want to do something for the Lord, do
it whatever you feel needs to be done, even if
you're shaking in your boots and you're scared to death,
take the first step. The grace comes with that first step,
and you get the grace as you step. Being afraid
is not a problem, she told me. It's doing nothing
(44:24):
when you're afraid. That's the problem. Boy was she writing.
And those words helped me finish a five year marathon
and a lot of her prayers. Thank Goodness only in time,
I think we fully appreciate Mother Angelica's contributions, not only
to women, to the church, to the world. But she
(44:44):
has done what no one else could. She preserved devotions
thought lost. She sewed a thread of hope into the
hearts of people who were hurting. She reached and carried
the traditions of the church to the young, and now
you're seeing in France and England, in the United States,
you've got thousands of young people coming to faith, begging
(45:08):
to be baptized and to come into the church. That also,
I think is the bounty of Mother Angelica's work, seeds
planted decades ago. But her personal story, the courageous life
that she lived, it really is its own lessons, and
I hope you'll explore that life in the biographies I've
(45:29):
written in other books. They're on my website. Go to
Raymondarroyo dot com or you can go to Amazon. Just
type in Mother Angelica Raymond Arroyo. Those books will come up.
She was imperfect, wounded, petty, angry at times, just like us. Still,
despite her failings, she trusted God enough to permit him
(45:51):
to create a literal network of miracles, something she herself
could never have done alone. I wanted to feature Mother
Angelica's story on this episode because I think we can
all mimic her holy recklessness, embrace risk in the present moment,
(46:11):
allow divine providence to lead the way it always works,
and do the ridiculous so God can do the miraculous.
Here's to Dodoes, and I want to leave you with
a little prayer. Mother actually came up with this. It
was at the end of one of her last public speeches,
and off the top of her head, she said this,
(46:32):
since there is no more time and you and I
may not pass this way again, I will ask the
Spirit to touch your hearts and teach you all those
marvelous things. How to live in the present moment, how
to be at peace when distress is assailing you, how
to love when you don't feel loved, how to always
(46:55):
commune with God in the depths of your soul, and
to bear those beautiful gifts of the Spirit always. I
love you, and God loves you more than you know.
Rest in peace, dear Reverend Mother. I hope you'll come
back to a royal grande soon. Wasn't that fun? I
(47:16):
like that I like to bring someone that I knew
personally with such a light in my life, and I
hope some of her lessons enlighten your own life. Why
live a dry, constricted trickle of a life when if
you fill it with good things, it can flow into
a broad, thriving Arroyo Grande. I'm raiding at Arroyo. Make
sure you subscribe like this episode, Thanks for diving in,
(47:39):
and we'll see you next time. Arroyo Grande is produced
in partnership with iHeart Podcasts and DPS Studios, and is
available on the iHeartRadio, Apple, wherever you get your podcasts
Who is the first woman in the history of broadcasts
to found and lead her own cable network for twenty years.
On this Arroyo Grande, I'm not only going to introduce
her to her the miracles of her life, but I'll
share the secrets of her amazing success which you can
apply to your own life. Come on, I'm Raymond Arroyo.
(00:30):
Welcome to Arroyo Grande. Go subscribe to the show right now.
Turn notifications on so you know what's coming, and boy
do we have some big things coming. Stay tuned now.
You all saw that Blue Origin space capsule that went
up to the edge of space with an all female crew.
They got some insane media coverage and the whole flight
was eleven minutes long. Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, of course,
(00:52):
were the first women to run for president. They were lauded.
But do you know who the first woman in the
history of broadcasts you found and lead her own cable
network was. If you're thinking Oprah, you're wrong. She did
it long before Oprah in nineteen eighty one. And she
was a nun, This nun mother Mary Angelica. So many
(01:15):
people have seen her reruns. You might have run across
her on the Eternal Word television network, which she founded,
the largest religious media empire on the planet. But despite
your familiarity with her, her story almost dwarfs her accomplishments.
In this episode, I'm going to tell you about the
many miracles that surfaced in her life, how she accomplished
(01:37):
her mighty mission, and how you can incorporate her secrets
of success into your own life. Now, Mother Mary Angelica
is not somebody I read about in a few books
and decided to do a show on. I literally wrote
the book or books, as the case may be, on
her life, her biography, Mother Angelica, the remarkable story of
a nun, her nerve, and a network of miracles. I
(01:59):
edited three books of her wisdom and her prayers, and
I wrote the final word on her life, her Grand Silence,
The Last Years and living Legacy of Mother Angelica. She
was also a beloved mentor, a friend of mine. Her
birthday falls on April twentieth, and she left us on
the eve of Easter in twenty sixteen. So I thought
(02:20):
this would be the perfect Easter episode. It's inspiring, it's uplifting,
and I think it'll change your life. So stay with it.
As I was collecting material for the biography of Mother Angelica.
I'll never forget a cardinal in Rome without solicitation. At
a dinner, shared the following story with me, and though
it's now an impossibility, this is what he said, he said,
(02:42):
John Paul. The second, Mother Teresa and Mother Angelica die
on the same day, but their mansions were still under construction.
So Saint Peter said, look, I hate to do this
to you three, but I have a little problem. We
just don't have the occupancy yet. We're building your mansions
and they're really big. They're taking extra time and staff,
so we're going to send you all to Hell, which
(03:03):
they did well. About two days later, Satan comes banging
on the pearly gates. Hey, Peter, get over here, come here,
come here. We got problems downstairs. He said, Well, what's
the problem, he said, Well, this John Paul is second.
I'm losing clients hand over fist. Every time somebody arrives,
he forgives them and shoe. They're out of there. And
then you got this Mother Teresa. Every time I hit
(03:25):
somebody with a boil, she heals them. I cut their
head off, she puts it back on. This woman's nothing
but trouble. But this Angelica, she's the worst, Satan says,
and Saint Peter says, well, what is she doing. She's
taken up a collection, she's installed central cooling. Get her
out of here. Now, that's kind of a cute, funny story,
(03:47):
but it's also grossly reductive. Now, some would prefer to
have us believe that caricature of this nun and file
mother Angelica Away is really nothing more than a good fundraiser,
But I think they're missing the point. In reality, Angelica
was a determined visionary, a simple woman with a broken
heart and a shattered body called to do great things.
(04:09):
She was an unlikely spiritual leader and innovator, a true believer,
and I think an inspiring example for all of us.
Many puzzle over her success. How did this woman of
all people become the founder and leading light of what
is today the largest religious media empire on the planet,
(04:30):
reaching more than one hundred million households on TV alone.
How did she become the first woman in the history
a broadcast to found not only a non for profit
television station, but she became the standard, the standard bearer
of traditional Catholicism. I can tell you this much She
(04:51):
didn't plan any of it. Mother didn't plan anything at all. Actually,
she relied on providence to be her guide. I'm getting
a little ahead of my But on the surface, she
was nothing special. She was plain looking on the plump side,
not especially brilliant. She was born in a crime ridden
Italian ghetto in Ohio in nineteen twenty three, a place
(05:13):
better known for its prostitutes and mafia slayings than its saints.
Rita Rizzo came into the world unwelcomed and unwanted, at
least by her father. I discovered that when her dad,
John Rizzo, learned of his daughter's coming, he flew into
a rage, and he physically assaulted his wife. Before she
ever arrived, Rita had already been rejected, but that rejection
(05:38):
and the hard circumstances of her unstable family life created
a fusion that would produce the woman who would later
become Mother Angelica. Long before I began this project, by
the way, I was struck by the unlikeliness of this
woman as a leader. She had everything going against her.
She was poor her formal education and stopped at high school.
(06:01):
She failed her junior year. She had an emotionally unstable
and suicidal mother, a nervous condition, stomach problems. No betting
man would have placed money on this woman succeeding. But oddly,
it was the pain, the physical setbacks that really illuminated
(06:21):
her path and showed her the way, which is one
of the first lessons of Mother Angelica's life. One of
the lessons it reveals perverse as it sounds, stay with me.
Pain can be instructive, it can be useful and at
times very powerful. The sting of pain was present from
(06:42):
the beginning in Rita's life, like a watchful friend. Early on,
she experienced a heartache common to too many women. At five,
Rita and her mother were abandoned by her father and
left to fend for themselves. Well, Rita's nerves produced stomach abnormalities,
and they took her to and they could never figure
out what was going on. She was diagnosed with something
(07:05):
called potosis of the stomach. It was impossible for her
to keep food down, so, searching for relief, Rita's mother
takes her to the home of a local mystic in Canton, Ohio,
a woman named Rhoda Wise. She was a stigmatic who
claimed to have had visions of Jesus and the saints
(07:26):
and even conversed with them. She would suffer Christ's passion
on Fridays. Now this is bizarre. When I saw these images,
I thought, what is this? But she would bleed profusely
from her head, her hands, and her feet on Fridays,
and the local papers attributed healing powers to this woman.
(07:47):
Thousands of people would stand outside her house. I mean,
there are lots of local reportage of this stuff at
the time. Well, when Rita came to missus Wise, the
Stigmatic merely instructed Rita to pray a novena nine days
of prayer to Saint Teres for a cure. That's all
she did, gave her a prayer card and sent her
(08:07):
on her way. Nine days later, little Rita wakes up
with the feeling that her stomach had been cured, and
indeed it had been. It was the pivotal event that
revealed God's love for it was for her miraculous. For
the first time in her life, she knew she had
a father in heaven, if not on earth, who was
(08:30):
concerned about her future and her life. Shortly thereafter, she
fell in love with God and she entered religious life.
Now I mentioned Rhodea Wise, the stigmatic, the mystic for
a couple of reasons. She was the first person to
show Mother Angelica that pain could redeem, that pain was
(08:50):
sometimes sent by God to his beloved ones, and that
suffering offered up to God could produce astounding results. Just
as importantly, rode Wise's supernatural sufferings made Christ's passion real.
For Rita, rode Wise's life was proof that Jesus wasn't
(09:11):
a concept or a theory or a picture on the wall,
but a living God, a real person who manifested himself
through lives in real time today, and Rita would never
forget that lesson. She learned to love God in a
radical way, and look, it is a radical path. She
(09:31):
trusted him completely, allowing his providence to take her to
places she could not have imagined, uncomfortable places, places she
didn't necessarily always want to go. You know, Mother never
intended to start a television network, that's for sure. She
often said, everything evolved. I mean, isn't that how it
always happens? Everything evolves. Let me tell you how the
(09:53):
network began, and really how she was set on the
path to create what became this enormous religious Empire in
the media. In the early nineteen fifties, Sister Angelica was
mopping a monastery hallway when she slipped, aggravating a birth
defect in her back and surgery was needed. Well the
(10:16):
night before the operation, the doctor came in and he said, look,
you've got a fifty to fifty chance of walking again.
Good night. So when he left, she made a desperate
deal with God. She said, if you let me walk again,
I will build you a monastery in the South. Now
why she chose the South had been a mystery for decades.
(10:39):
I cracked it. It's in the biography of Mother Angelica,
but I'll tell you about that another time. Anyway, she
did walk again with the aid of crutches and a
back and a leg brace, leading her to comment later,
when you make a deal with God, be very specific,
and that's good advice. Mother eventually built the monastery in
(11:01):
the buckle of the Bible Belt Birmingham, Alabama, where Catholics
constituted about two percent of the populace. So to raise
funds and awareness for the community. In the early nineteen sixties,
the local bishop allowed Mother Angelica to visit churches in Birmingham.
Social groups just to raise awareness and introduce them to
(11:23):
the concept of a cloistered group of nuns who just
spent their lives in prayer, hidden away from the world.
So she gave lectures all over town and that led
to a Bible study in her monastery parlor for a
group of Episcopalian ladies initially, and they encouraged her to
write mini books to capture some of her wisdom and
(11:45):
guidance on the spiritual life. So she wrote these little
mini books. She would just write them in her chapel.
They were maybe twenty thirty pages apiece. And from there
she was invited to speak to charismatic gatherings and other
conferences all over the country. She was captivating, i have
to say, and a lot of fun. And the ladies
in the group and the people she was speaking to
(12:06):
said you've got to record this for television. Mother. Well,
she decided to do just that. She did a series
for CBN. Pat Robertson invited her to do a series
on the Bible, really her just flipping through the gospels
and riffing on them if you will. Well, it was
while shooting her second series it was called in His
(12:26):
Sandals for CBN that she became aware of a CBS
mini series entitled The Word. Now, the Word was based
on an Irving Wallace novel by the same name, and
the story contended that an ancient scroll had been discovered
which proved that Jesus was a fraud. Well, let's say
Mother was a little perturbed by that idea, and then
(12:49):
she realized that she was shooting her series at the
Birmingham CBS affiliate. Well, she decided to stand her ground
and go make a fuss about this miniseries. So she
marched into the studio demanded to see the manager, a
guy named Hugh Smith. I interviewed him for the biography. Well,
(13:10):
this poor country selicme's waddling out and he says, now, Mother,
calmed down, calm down, what's up? What's going on? And
she says, your network is going to show a movie
called The Word and it is blasphemous to our lord.
And he says, I haven't heard anything about it, mother,
And she says, I don't care what you've heard. There
is no way I'm going to do this show here
(13:32):
if you continue to air that mini series. And poor
Hughes Smith says, well, we've had no complaints. Mother, you're
calm down. Nobody else is complaining about this, and she said,
it's going to confuse the people. And he said, are
you telling me how to run my station? She said no,
I think you have crimey programs, but I've never told
(13:53):
you how to run your station. But this is blasphemy. Well,
now her arms are crossed, her eyes are narrow, and
she asks him, are you a Christian? He said, yes, ma'am,
But do you think God cares what we air down
here at the Birmingham CBS affiliate. And she said, yes,
he cares, and I care. And if you air this thing,
(14:14):
I will no longer record my programs here and you
won't be able to broadcast them on this network. Well,
he said, lady, you leave here and you're off television.
You need us. She said, I don't need you. I
only need God. I'll buy my own cameras and build
my own studio. He said you can't do that. She said,
(14:38):
you just watch me, And with that she gathered up
her set pieces or rocking chair or bible, threw them
in the back of an Impala and she drove home. Well,
when she got there, she had to admit that Smith
was probably right. She didn't know where she was going
to shoot her program, and this was probably the end
of her television career. But I love this about not
(15:00):
only her story, but Mother herself, because it demonstrates Mother
Angelica's total trust in God, who, in her case, took
even her failures and turned them into something wonderful. Mother
was always receptive to God's promptings, and at that point,
the sisters reminded her her nuns of the uncompleted garage
(15:22):
in the monastery backyard, so she went out there. They
were still laying the foundation, and she instructed the builder
to expand his design and build her a TV studio there.
It is interesting, however, that when she got around to
naming her network, you know, she named it the Eternal
word Television network, almost as a protest against that miniseries,
(15:47):
the word that was the catalyst for the whole thing.
But the moral of the story is this, sometimes standing
on principle and risking everything is the only way to
realize what God intends for you. Mother Angelica was fifty
eight years old when she took the church and her
monastery into cable television, a woman with a bloate at
(16:10):
heart diabetes, a twisted spine, a lame leg, and literally
two hundred dollars in the bank. Still she went forward.
When I asked her about this time, she said, the
need we have for assurance and the absolute lack of
willingness to take a risk for God is appalling to me.
She said, I'm sure our Lord asked a lot of
(16:32):
people to build a network. There has to be a
reason that he chose a few nuns who didn't know anything,
in the wrong state of life with no money. Because
it goes against reason. Some people say I'm a woman
of great faith. I'm really a coward who keeps moving forward.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
She told me questioned, Nuns in television is without question,
one of the most ridiculous things that could have ever happened.
It just evolved. When I went to China thirty eight
in Chicago, I walked in that little, tiny, tiny studio
that I had never seen a studio or TV studio before.
We had already been publicizing books for a couple of years,
(17:13):
reaching a lot of people. I remember standing in the
doorway and saying, it doesn't take much to reach the masses,
And I said, Lord.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
I've got to have one of these.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
And I thought after I said that what would you
do with it?
Speaker 4 (17:28):
Dummy?
Speaker 2 (17:28):
You know, what would you do with something like this?
But I got this in my mind. I couldn't get
it out.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Mother practiced what she called a theology of risk. Mother
never hesitated. When she felt God was calling her to something,
leading her to something, she ran after it. So many
of us worry, what are people going to think? We
become hamstrung by the possibility of failure, so we stay
right where we are, regardless of what we're being inspired
(17:56):
to do. A call to do and Mother used to say,
God is looking for Dodos. There are lots of people
out there who know it can't be done, so they
don't do it. But a Dodo doesn't know it can't
be done. God uses Dodos, and I'm a Dodo. She said, Okay,
here's a quick Dodo story. I love this story. It's amazing.
(18:19):
When Mother Angelica needed to purchase her first satellite dish
in nineteen eighty one, she called an RCA executive. Okay,
and I interviewed this man when I was working on
the biography. She went down the phone book and there
was only one manufacturer at the time building these enormous
satellite discs that you needed if you were going to
(18:39):
broadcast a signal into the skies, into space and then
they go back down to your homes. And those satellites
at the time were about two million dollars plus. She
calls this guy and she went down the list. She
was looking for any vice president whose name ended in A,
I or O. She was looking for an Italian whose
arms she could twist like the guy in the neighborhood.
(19:01):
So anyway, she finally gets this RCAA vice president on
the phone. I interviewed the poor man. He said, talking
to Mother Angelica was like going nine rounds with Joe Frasier.
You know. She kept coming at you. And she said, hello,
this is Mother Angelica. I need one of those satellites
you sell it. And he's like, who is this? She said,
(19:22):
a Mother Angelica. I'm down in Birmingham, Alabama. I've got
this said network. I'm I bring Catholic Network, Religious Network.
We're gonna bring hope to people. But I need one
of your satellites. And he said, well, do you have
two point five million dollars that's the cost of the satellite.
She said, well, sweetheart, that's why I'm calling you. Well,
this went back and forth for a while. Finally the
(19:42):
guy after I think he was just bullied and beaten.
He said, look, lo, lord, I can't just give you
the satellite, but what I can do is order it
for you, and if you can make a down payment
at the time of delivery of six hundred thousand dollars,
then they'll unload the equipment. But unless you give the
man a certified check for six hundred thousand dollars, not
(20:02):
a piece of equipment comes up the truck. Do you understand, Yes, sir,
do you think you can get that kind of money?
The Lord has all the money in the world. God
bless you. She hangs up the phone. Well, three weeks later,
here comes the two flat beds with all the RCAA
satellite equipment on it, and she is beaming. She's like,
you know, a mother waiting for her child. She's excited,
(20:23):
and the nuns are there just to paint the picture.
These are a group of nuns in Birmingham, Alabama. Irondale, Alabama,
probably best known for Fanny Flag books. You know, the
Fried Green Tomato books. That's the same town where Mother
Angelica and her nuns live. But this is rustic. They're
on the side of a hill. You know. She's got
like a chain link fence with sheep and goats running
(20:44):
around and a chapel in the middle of the place.
That's it. There's nothing happening there. So here comes as
RCAA satellite and the man gets off and says, are
you mother, Angelica? We need you to sign for this. Well,
she goes to sign and he says, do you have
the check? It says you need a check for six
hundred thousand dollars before I can unload anything. And she goes,
wait right here. Mother takes her crutches and goes into
(21:08):
the chapel. She kneels. Now, you husbands will love this
part of the story. She kneels down, and she looks
up at her spouse, the Lord and the blessed sacrament,
and she says, where your satellites outside? You wanted this thing,
you'd say I ordered it. Now the man, I guess
he's looking for payments. So this is your satellites, waited.
(21:30):
I don't need it, but you wanted it, so here
it is, and it's time to pay. I guess. She
expected the money to fall from the ceiling, which it
did not. Do by the way that day. But what
I love about this is when Mother Angelica reached a
brick wall. This is another great lesson from her life.
I watch this happen so many times. She would be
inspired to do something, but when she hit a brick wall,
(21:52):
as she did that day, she would drop it like
a hot rock, like it never happened. And in that moment,
she got up on her crutches. She walked out of
the chap and she was determined to turn the delivery
away because this must have been her inspiration, her will,
not God's. And as she was talking to the delivery man,
one of the nuns came running over from the monastery,
(22:14):
a woman named Sister Emmanuel. She's still there by the way,
and she said, Mother, there's a man on the phone.
It's an emergency. He really needs to talk to you.
He won't get off the phone. He's called us multiple times.
Could you please come talk to him. She said, Jesus,
Mary and Joseph's sister. I got big business here, and
she said, but I know that, but this man, he
won't get up the phone. He says it's an emergency,
he needs to talk to you. I'll only talk to
you okay, give me a second, sweetheart, she tells the
(22:35):
delivery man. She goes back into the monastery picks up
the phone. It's a guy calling from the Bahamas. He
had read her many books many years ago, remember those
from the seventies, Almost a decade ago. He had read
one of her many books. He had been inspired, converted,
changed his life, got off of drugs, reconciled with his family,
and for the last six months he had been trying
(22:57):
to get in touch with Mother Angelica because he wanted
to write a donation to her book ministry, a donation
of six hundred thousand dollars. Can you send it right now?
She said, well, that day, I didn't believe this story.
By the way, when I heard it, she went through
every bit of it. But I ended up going to
South Trust, which was the local bank at the time.
(23:20):
That was where she did her banking. I pulled the
records and there, in black and white was the six
hundred thousand dollars donation that the guy wired into account.
That was the down payment for the satellite that to
this moment broadcast EWTN in North and South America, and
a great testament to her faith to the very end
(23:44):
to the bitter end.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
You know.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Mother would always say God is good, but he's slow.
That's a good example of it. She continuously embraced that
next risk for God. Mother Angelica lived in what she
called the present moment. It is, I believe, one of
the main reasons for her success. She explained it to
me this way, what is God calling you to do now?
(24:10):
In this present moment, now, yesterday, tomorrow, right now. God's
will is manifested to us in the duties and experiences
of the present moment. We have only to accept them
and try to be like Jesus in them now. As
you can imagine, this spared her many a worry about
the future and allowed Angelica to go where angels feared
(24:32):
to tread. Oh, she went there too. Now. No one
saw Mother Angelica coming. She was a complete surprise. I mean,
had certain church officials realize what Mother Angelica and her
network would become, she might well have been ecclesial road
killed by the end of the first week. A man
they might have seen coming. But a woman, an aged
(24:53):
nun with a quick mouth and a grandmotherly manner, answerable
only to the Pope, completely surprised these guys They didn't
know what to do with her. She looked so harmless,
you know. Most of the church bureaucracy considered her a
rube who would quickly fail. But that too was part
of her success. They underestimated her. She was like God's
(25:14):
little trojan horse on crutches. It's always the simple ones
that God chooses, the humble. Former Pope Benedict the sixteenth
marvel at how God seems to call the little, the
simple to shape the culture and carry the truth into
our time. And Mother may well be one of those people,
(25:35):
you know. I was originally going to title her biography
to Confound the Wise The Unexpected Life of Mother Angelica
from that great line in Corinthians. God chooses the lowli
to confound the wise, and the weak to confound the strong. Unfortunately,
not everyone enjoys being confounded, which often put Mother on
a collision course with some in the hierarchy. She fell
(25:56):
into television in nineteen eighty one, a year before the
Bishop's Conference launched its own ill fated Catholic Telecommunications Network
of America, their own cable system. By the time the
bishops launched in nineteen eighty two, they found their planes
spoken streetwise, none had beaten them to the punch. Mother
(26:17):
was already an established on air presence, and she was
connecting with wide audiences across the country. Lacking viewers and
sufficient funds, the Bishop's network eventually dissolved divine providence anyone.
This partially explains why Mother Angelica had, shall we say,
(26:37):
a difficult relationship with the Bishop's Conference and certain bishops.
Then there was that tiny issue of orthodoxy. You see, Mother,
from the earliest days refused to air descent on her network,
no matter who that descent came from, including bishops. One
day in nineteen eighty eight, a priest who worked for
the Bishop's Conference called Mother to insist that she aired
(27:00):
interviews with any bishop who wished to be on her network,
regardless of their orthodoxy.
Speaker 5 (27:07):
Why don't you air these people? And I said no,
and I don't think they're Catherine. He says, by what
right do you have to say that?
Speaker 3 (27:21):
I said, I owned a network, and he said you
won't always be there, and I said, I'll blow the
damn thing up before you get your hands on it.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
So they caught you on a good day, Yeah, a
good day. Now, some clergymen have criticized Mother Angelica. Pointing
to her brashness, her simplistic theology, some have called her
names and ridiculed her. That's unfortunate. Mother Angelica never set
out to lead the church. She fell into the role
by default. People listened to Mother Angelica because of the
(28:15):
directness of her message or humor as you heard, her
natural ability to tell a story, and most importantly, the
soundness of her teaching. She was standing on top of
two thousand years of church teaching, and they thirsted for
Orthodoxy for devotions, and she gave it to them when
others wouldn't. Had those critical members of the clergy been
(28:38):
doing their job, had they been bringing a message of
hope and truth and hard truth to the common man,
maybe God would not have chosen a cloistered none to
do this television work. As I told an archbishop once,
was mystified by Mother Angelica's hold on people. I told him,
when the bishops regained their moral voice and shake off
(29:00):
their timidity, Mother Angelica will cease to exist. She filled
a leadership vacuum in the church. Mother never intended to
lead anybody. She would be the first to admit she's
no theologian. She certainly wasn't looking to be one. She
had many faults which she recognized, and you know that
I think also is part of her appeal. She was
(29:20):
look She was like a podcaster before there was podcasting,
and she was authentic long before people caught the authenticity wave.
In her humanity, people saw themselves and that gave them hope.
Mother could be tempestuous. She was quick to anger, suspicious.
There's a funny story, one of the nuns told me. Maybe, well,
(29:43):
I'll tell it. It doesn't give you a little insight
in Derek character. Sister Gabriel is a little Vietnamese nun
in Mother Angelica's order. She's still there, and when she
first came to the monastery her English was not so great.
Her English instructor told her, whenever someone asked you question,
you always have the option to answer yes or no.
(30:05):
So to ease her into religious life, Mother Angelica phrased
commands to Sister Gabriel as questions. So Mother said, would
you like to clean the hall? Sweet high Well Gabriel
thought about it for a moment. She knew she had
a choice. She considered it and she said, no, my
(30:26):
choice is no. I wouldn't like to do it well
to make herself perfectly clear. At that point, Mother Angelica
stood at her full height, appropriately modulated her voice and barked,
just do it, damn it. You know. One of the
most important things she taught me is that saints are
not perfect. They're just trying to be perfect. Mother's weaknesses
(30:51):
and her flaws were always in evidence. Some of them
sprang from her terrible childhood, which could easily derailed her life.
But the glory of Angelicas is that God used even
her weaknesses for his own ends. She talked about this
in her very first television broadcast, and I think it
applies to all of us, on a show entitled Our Hermitage.
(31:14):
Remember she was doing this for CBN. She talked about
the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes, and she said,
have you ever wondered what happened to those scraps after
Jesus took them and filled those twelve baskets? She said,
I've bet those apostles ate those scraps for months. Most
of you take the scraps of your life and you
(31:34):
permit them to poor guilt on your poor souls, of resentment,
of regret, and you live in those regrets and you
live in that guilt. I wish I'd never felt angry
or distressed, but I have. But I know that Jesus
is going to take the scraps of my life and
your life, and he will make something so beautiful. If
(31:57):
you have anything in your past that you saw sorry
for that seems to be keeping you back and making
you more miserable and unhappy, let the Lord pick up
those scraps. And that's just what she did. She let
God pick up the scraps every day. And she also
bet everything on God, which brings us to the quintessential
(32:18):
Mother Angelica principle. Get your pencils ready, do the ridiculous
so God can do the miraculous. She would say, time
and time again. She would prove that dictum to be true.
One day, in nineteen eighty eight, she was determined to retire.
The network was on solid footing. She had launched the thing.
She accomplished what she had been asked to do. So,
(32:40):
while in prayer, she shared her retirement plans with God.
Mother relayed the conversation to me. She said, Lord, I
want to pull back a little bit from the network. No,
she felt God tell her, I want you to begin
a shortwave radio network. Lord, I don't know anything about
short wave, she said, I know. Begin He told her.
(33:04):
She really didn't understand the order at all. But she
pressed forward, not always easily. Mother never hesitated. You'll remember,
I told you earlier when she felt she was being
led to something, when she felt God was leading her,
she would go for it. Where most of us dismissed
those tiny inspirations, Angelica hung on for dear life, and
(33:24):
she rode them to their completion. Five years after that
prayerful dialogue, Mother Angelica was owner of the only privately
held shortwave network in the world, which cost more than
thirty five million dollars to bring into being. She truly
did the ridiculous so God could do the miraculous. Now,
(33:46):
all this might seem crazy to some, miraculous to others,
but crazy to some. And people will no doubt say,
and I hear you, how did she know this was
God speaking to her? Now? Not even Mother Angelica can
prove that, and I'm not going to try either. But
there is one thing we should take note of. In
practically every case, the things she was asked to build materialized,
(34:11):
and they did so in extraordinary ways. That evidence is
hard to dismiss. And the other thing I promised in
the title was her extraordinary foundation of prayer. This is
a woman who was a cloistered nun. She spent a
few hours a day before God in the blessed sacrament,
that's the consecrated host in her chapel. Every day she
(34:33):
would kneel down and she would pray. She would meditate
over the scripture quietly in silence for hours, and she
imaginatively put herself in the middle of the gospel stories
and during that moment, during those times, she discovered incredible lessons.
And I would argue it was from the fullness of
(34:54):
that prayer, that meditation, which she called her secret weapon,
that prayer that everything sprang her on air teachings, her
advice to callers, her split second decisions are where to
take this multimillion dollar corporation. The prayer quiet with God
allowed her time to hear his voice and trust him
(35:17):
to guide her steps. She was also a big believer
in divine providence. You know that is that's the idea
that God provides all you need, all you have to
do is trust Him. Easier said than done. When I
asked her what she meant by divine providence. She told
me this, and it's in Mother Angelica's little Book of
(35:38):
Life Lessons, that's a collection of her wisdom. She said,
there's a scary thing about God's providence. If you don't go,
he won't go. In every instance, God waited on his
apostles to step out in faith, not knowing what was
coming next. And this is where we failed today. We've
been brainwashed, she said, to believe that. We first have
(36:01):
to have a goal. Then we have to find a committee.
Then we have to have meetings, then we have a
fun drive, and then we must get qualified people in
a budget, and then you can begin to do something
for the Lord. Sweetheart, by that time, you've forgotten what
you started out to do. But because she was in
constant prayer and she was providence sometimes turned up in
(36:25):
unpleasant ways. I have to say Mother didn't court controversy,
but it often found her because when she saw something
that violated her principles or her faith, you can bet
she was going to speak out against it. Now, some
would say, don't rock the boat, just be quiet, bide
your time. Mother didn't operate that way. Case in point.
(36:49):
Ever since Vatican two, ideological divisions have splintered the church.
There were progressives wanting things like ordination, women loose or
more relaxed, laid back liturgies, while traditionalists in the church
craved eternal truths and timeless devotions and socralty. Well. In
nineteen ninety three, Mother Angelica broadcast Pope John Paul the
(37:12):
Second's visit to Denver one evening. During a passion play,
a female mime played the role of Jesus. Mother felt
compelled to take to the airwaves and respond.
Speaker 5 (37:27):
I'm tired. I'm tired I'm being pushed in corners. I'm
tired of your inclusive language that refuses to admit the
Son of God is a man. I'm tired of your tricks.
I'm tired of your deceit. I'm tired of you constantly
(37:49):
just making a crack and then the first thing you know,
there's a whole and all of us fall into it.
I am so tired of your liberal church in America.
Speaker 4 (38:00):
Do you see this car? We had this little modern
collar so that we would really appeal to this modern world,
this pagan society. Am I better now, but I'm being realistic.
(38:23):
We're going to change it.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
We're going to look very Roman.
Speaker 5 (38:29):
Because I make in a statement.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
There were those who worried that Mother Angelica had now
taken on the bishop's conference and blown up a papal event,
and that might be the end of her network. The
opposite happened. She was featured in newsweek, in major media,
and her counterprotest put her on the map. Viewership of
e WTN exploded. Why do you think that was? Because
(38:56):
she was outspoken, She was true to her God and
her faith, true to herself, and she stood with her audience.
And that's such an important lesson. If you're principled and
you stand with your audience, I don't care what business
you're in, the audience will stand with you, and miracles
might just happen. You might also notice Mother Angelica's lack
(39:19):
of hesitation in that clip. She once told me when
I was vacillating about something, there's a lot of things
that you can do, but you've got to do what
God asked you to do and stick to it. You
have all eternity to experience the presence of God, but
you have a very short time to do something for him,
(39:40):
So get cracking. Now is the time to act. I've
really taken that to heart. As an example from my
own life. I did not intend to write a book
or a biography, and certainly nothing as complex or time
consuming as Mother Angelica's story. I was on a retreat
in nineteen ninety nine and I received one of those
(40:01):
tiny inspirations we talked about earlier. I just a passing thought,
is all it was, and I thought maybe I should
write her story. I didn't know hidden pieces of her
tale that I felt there might be something there. So
I approached her. I asked her help. I told Mother
I could not write a definitive biography without a cooperation.
(40:23):
But and this I thought would kill the whole deal.
I told her I could not write and would not
write an authorize biography because I wanted the freedom to
investigate the story as I saw it, and editorial control
would be mine alone. She prayed about it for a while,
and she came back to me a couple of days later,
and she said, all right, let's start and see what happens.
(40:46):
She gave me total access to her community, her history,
her diaries, letters, physicians, friends, her sisters. I found the enemies.
It was an incredible journey, and I have to say
a brave one from other Angelica. I mean, think about it.
Would you let someone who had known you for several years,
seen you in good times and bad, write your life story,
(41:08):
submit yourself to all manner of questioning and interrogation for
several hours at a stretch. I'm not sure if I would.
This was a trying and instructive exercise for Mother. Once
we'd got into the swing of things, she told me,
I wish you forty years in purgatory if you sugarcoat
my life. She said, I want people to see the humanity,
(41:30):
so they realized that God did everything. We would meet
in the parlor of her monastery every Saturday for about
five to six hour sessions, interrupted only by lunch. We
moved chronologically through entire life, and I would go out
rifle through source documents in Canton, Ohio or in Rome, Birmingham,
interview people who crossed your path, and then I'd come
(41:52):
back at the end of every week and have a
new crop of questions I would throw at her. This
went on from nineteen ninety nine to November twenty eighth
of two thousand and one. On the twenty eighth, I
told her that would be our final interview, and we
covered her entire life up until that point, and the
(42:13):
last interview we talked about the future, the future of
her monastery, her life, what she saw for her community next,
what she saw for EWT in her network next, and
I would only come back to her, I said if
I needed spot interviews to fill in holes in the
writing as I went along. And a few days later
we recorded a Christmas special together and did a live
(42:35):
show together, and Mother went into her cloister for her
advent retreat. So they locked themselves away for about three
weeks before Christmas. Before going into the chapel that Christmas
Eve in two thousand and one, she told her nuns,
Jesus is coming today. I'm going to the chapel to
wait for him. He would come more quickly than she imagined.
(42:58):
Mother Angelica suffered a stroke that day in the chapel.
That morning, it limited her speech, sealed her memory. Providentially,
without my knowing it, I had captured the last testament
of Mother Angelica, the final word on her remarkable life.
What a gift she has given me and really anybody
who read that biography. Had she said no, and I
(43:20):
think about this all the time. Had she said, no,
or had I ignored that little voice in my head,
much of Mother's story would have been lost. But God's
timing his providence again. It's pretty good. It's not always easy,
but it's good if you trust it, if we're open
to it. And I have to confess I hesitated once
I began writing this work. Writing is a terrible prospect
(43:43):
for any time, but a project like this seemed so
far flung. It was daunting. Thousands of TV shows, to
wade through, more than one hundred interviews, medical records, on
and on and on. And when I shared my fears,
Mother Angelica told me this. It's great advice for anybody
who I think is hesitant about what you're doing. She said,
(44:04):
if you want to do something for the Lord, do
it whatever you feel needs to be done, even if
you're shaking in your boots and you're scared to death,
take the first step. The grace comes with that first step,
and you get the grace as you step. Being afraid
is not a problem, she told me. It's doing nothing
(44:24):
when you're afraid. That's the problem. Boy was she writing.
And those words helped me finish a five year marathon
and a lot of her prayers. Thank Goodness only in time,
I think we fully appreciate Mother Angelica's contributions, not only
to women, to the church, to the world. But she
(44:44):
has done what no one else could. She preserved devotions
thought lost. She sewed a thread of hope into the
hearts of people who were hurting. She reached and carried
the traditions of the church to the young, and now
you're seeing in France and England, in the United States,
you've got thousands of young people coming to faith, begging
(45:08):
to be baptized and to come into the church. That also,
I think is the bounty of Mother Angelica's work, seeds
planted decades ago. But her personal story, the courageous life
that she lived, it really is its own lessons, and
I hope you'll explore that life in the biographies I've
(45:29):
written in other books. They're on my website. Go to
Raymondarroyo dot com or you can go to Amazon. Just
type in Mother Angelica Raymond Arroyo. Those books will come up.
She was imperfect, wounded, petty, angry at times, just like us. Still,
despite her failings, she trusted God enough to permit him
(45:51):
to create a literal network of miracles, something she herself
could never have done alone. I wanted to feature Mother
Angelica's story on this episode because I think we can
all mimic her holy recklessness, embrace risk in the present moment,
(46:11):
allow divine providence to lead the way it always works,
and do the ridiculous so God can do the miraculous.
Here's to Dodoes, and I want to leave you with
a little prayer. Mother actually came up with this. It
was at the end of one of her last public speeches,
and off the top of her head, she said this,
(46:32):
since there is no more time and you and I
may not pass this way again, I will ask the
Spirit to touch your hearts and teach you all those
marvelous things. How to live in the present moment, how
to be at peace when distress is assailing you, how
to love when you don't feel loved, how to always
(46:55):
commune with God in the depths of your soul, and
to bear those beautiful gifts of the Spirit always. I
love you, and God loves you more than you know.
Rest in peace, dear Reverend Mother. I hope you'll come
back to a royal grande soon. Wasn't that fun? I
(47:16):
like that I like to bring someone that I knew
personally with such a light in my life, and I
hope some of her lessons enlighten your own life. Why
live a dry, constricted trickle of a life when if
you fill it with good things, it can flow into
a broad, thriving Arroyo Grande. I'm raiding at Arroyo. Make
sure you subscribe like this episode, Thanks for diving in,
(47:39):
and we'll see you next time. Arroyo Grande is produced
in partnership with iHeart Podcasts and DPS Studios, and is
available on the iHeartRadio, Apple, wherever you get your podcasts
Host
Raymond Arroyo
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