Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E135: How A Nun Built The Largest Religious Media Empire w/ Michael Warsaw

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E135: How A Nun Built The Largest Religious Media Empire w/ Michael Warsaw · The Lila Rose Show

0:00
I've always referred to Mother Angelica as the witness to
0:02
Providence. She'd been a nun for her whole
0:05
adult life. She steps out and says, I'm
0:07
going to create this, this television network, no money,
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$200, some sheep and goats and and the nuns, you know, and
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people thought she was crazy and in the industry, they thought
0:16
she'll never get it off the ground.
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It's not going to last six months.
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There's not going to be any interest in that.
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And yet she was right. She was a pioneer.
0:24
She stepped out in faith, took the risk even though she didn't
0:27
have the money, if she trusted so deeply in our OR to know that
0:30
he would provide what she needed.
0:32
And he did. Hello, everybody.
0:38
Welcome back to the Lila Rose Podcast.
0:40
OK, you're probably wondering, where am I right now?
0:43
I'm actually in Napa in Northern California at something called
0:46
the Napa Institute, and I'm here in this outdoor studio with my
0:51
dear friends at EWTN. This episode is going to be very
0:56
inspiring and it's very meaningful for me personally.
0:59
So I'm very excited to share this with you because we're
1:02
going to be deep diving the story of Mother Angelica, who's
1:07
somebody that if you don't already know about her, you need
1:09
to know about her. Mother Angelica is the foundress
1:12
of EWTN, the Eternal Word Television Network.
1:16
Now it is in the digital age and doing all kinds of amazing
1:18
things. And the show, the podcast, the
1:21
Lila Rose Podcast is officially partnering with EWTN.
1:25
But today we're gonna be talking with the chairman and the CEO of
1:29
EWTN, Michael Warsaw, and he is here with me.
1:33
This is actually his set we're using.
1:35
So thank you, Michael. Thank you, Lyla.
1:36
You're free to ask questions too, since I'm using your
1:39
cameras, but it's delightful to get to be out here in beautiful
1:43
Napa with you. Absolutely.
1:44
This is great. This is great.
1:45
Thanks for doing this. Yeah.
1:47
Thank you for doing this. So you have a lot on your
1:50
shoulders. So I just want people.
1:52
First of all, that may not be. I'm sure they've seen the DWTN
1:56
somewhere. Read news from EWTNEWTN is the
1:59
largest Catholic network in the world.
2:01
Yes, largest religious media organization in the world.
2:04
Tell tell us a little more about that Michael. 1st Art.
2:07
Yeah. So, so we, we span all media.
2:11
So traditional television, we operate 10 global television
2:16
networks, 26 regional television networks in, in different parts
2:21
of the world. So in, in places like Ukraine,
2:26
Hungary, Latvia, Norway, they're all versions of EWTN in those
2:31
local languages and and many, many other places around the
2:34
world. So we do television, we have a
2:36
Global Radio apostolate as well. So we have AM and FM stations.
2:40
We do audio content. We have a news division which is
2:44
the largest Catholic News organization on the planet with
2:49
multiple news agencies and languages like Arabic and
2:53
German. And we do French content, we do
2:56
content in Africa, we do content in Italian.
2:59
So not to mention then our whole digital side, which we were
3:04
actually among the first Catholic organizations to ever
3:09
have presence on the web back in 1995.
3:13
We launchedewtn.com and you know, so we now have this whole
3:17
host of of digital properties and we even have a newspaper,
3:22
the National Catholic Register. So yeah, a little bit, a little
3:25
bit. And so pretty much, you know,
3:27
any, any sort of media, any type of media we are involved in in
3:33
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OK, so there's a lot here because I think what people
5:08
might think, oh, big media organization all over the globe,
5:11
that's cool. But most people have no clue
5:14
that this was started by a cloistered nun, a poor Claire
5:19
named Mother Angelica. And what is very exciting is
5:22
that you worked very closely with her.
5:24
You were basically handpicked by her and she, I believe, may be
5:29
on have a cause in the future underway for her canonization.
5:33
So I love getting the opportunity to talk to people
5:36
that may have known a St. And also, she's built something,
5:40
again, the largest religious network in the world of any
5:43
religion and certainly the largest Catholic 1.
5:45
So there's a lot here. But first of all, where what's
5:48
your background, Michael? How did you get tied up in this?
5:50
Yeah, so, so, you know, I I grew up in Western Massachusetts as a
5:55
kid, I went to Catholic University of America in DC,
5:59
studied theology and liturgy and thought that that was the
6:03
direction I was going to go. And and was discerning a
6:07
vocation of priesthood and decided that that really wasn't
6:11
what God was calling me to. Met my met my bride there in
6:16
Washington. But was was in the late 1980s
6:20
was working with the Basilica in Washington as their
6:24
communications director. So I created and founded their
6:27
communications department and did media relations work and so
6:31
forth. And it was through that that I
6:32
became associated with EWTN and first met EWTN and began to work
6:38
together. And it was through that then
6:40
that I met Mother Angelica. So.
6:42
Like meeting her for the first time.
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It was incredible. I mean, it was an incredible
6:45
experience. She was, she was, you know, warm
6:48
and funny and wonderful and, and just a obviously a woman of
6:52
great faith, but it but it was a little bit like sitting down
6:56
with your grandmother in some way.
6:58
You know, was she at the time when you met her?
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Oh, so she would have been probably in her 60s, I guess, at
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that point, yeah. Old was Mother Angelica when she
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founded EWTN. 5058, 58 years old, Yeah.
7:10
Which by the way, anyone listening, 58 is when she
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started this global organization.
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And I just think people think, oh, 58, I'm going to start
7:18
looking at retirement. She just started at 50. 8 she
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began, and. Then you met her just a few
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years later. So in, in, yeah, just just a few
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years after she began. So, yeah, yeah.
7:29
And so how did she recruit you? So.
7:31
You were faithfully by her side and she passed the reins on to
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you. When?
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She yes, yeah, down, down, down the road a bit.
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So, you know, I hosted her in 1990.
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I hosted her for a visit to Washington and, and she received
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an award at Catholic University and some other things.
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And so we got to spend a lot of time together in that in that
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time. And before she left to go back
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home to Birmingham, she, you know, kind of said, well, you
7:58
know, you ought to think about moving to Birmingham.
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You know, and I didn't really think anything of it, although I
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was thinking, I'm not sure that might have might have been a job
8:06
offer. And so, yeah, sure enough, we
8:10
communicated. And six months later, you know,
8:13
my wife and I were on our way to Birmingham.
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I didn't learn until after she died that one of the nuns told
8:21
me the story that she had come home to the monastery after that
8:24
visit and was telling the nuns about it.
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And she just sort of casually said to them, oh, and I and I
8:31
met the man who's going to succeed me at EWTN.
8:35
And, you know, I'm glad she didn't tell me that or I didn't
8:39
hear that before. But but I was, I was obviously
8:42
very moved to hear that. And yeah.
8:45
So I, you know, this idea of let's go to Birmingham, let's be
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a part of EWTN. You know, if you want to test
8:53
your marriage of three months, go home and tell your wife,
8:55
who's just started her doctoral work at Johns Hopkins
8:58
University, who's an opera singer in the middle of a
9:01
performing career, that you want to leave your nice little
9:04
townhouse on Capitol Hill in DC and move to Birmingham, AL to go
9:09
work for a nun. That was an interesting
9:12
conversation. But Jackie was on board.
9:14
And so six months later we were we were in Birmingham and went
9:19
from there. OK, so I want to start with
9:22
Mother Angelica's vision because you're so close to it.
9:25
You were in the early days. You knew her so well.
9:29
I mean, you were at her bedside when she was suffering later in
9:31
her life. And so your viewpoint is so
9:35
unique. I mean, it's the closest
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viewpoint to be apostolate there is.
9:39
I would say the organization there is sans Mother Angelica
9:42
herself. So you're the guy, Michael.
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So you got to tell us how it went down.
9:45
OK. So first starting with Mother
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Angelica, She was a cloistered. Poor Claire.
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Do I have that right? You have that right, Claire of
9:53
Perpetual Adoration. All right, poor Claire of
9:55
perpetual adoration. It's a.
9:57
Particular branch of the poor Claire's all right that devote
10:00
themselves to adoration of the blessed.
10:01
Sacrament, Jesus and the Blessed Sacrament.
10:03
Very important part of the the charism in the story.
10:06
And cloistered, meaning she's not in the world, she's in
10:10
behind the walls, the garden. Behind the grill and doesn't
10:14
interact with the. OK, so how does this nun
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suddenly decide to start a TV show?
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And how does that even work when she's cloistered?
10:23
Right, so and. At the time this is pre Internet
10:26
so. Yes, yeah, there's.
10:27
No, like no, no starting an Instagram page, which you
10:29
probably would have done if that had.
10:31
Happened. No, absolutely.
10:32
If yeah, if that had been an option, she would have done it.
10:34
But so in the, in the 1970s, you have to go back to that.
10:40
Before EWTN, she, she was doing Bible studies there in
10:46
Birmingham. She was, she had written a
10:48
series of little mini books and meditations on scripture and
10:53
themes. And she would, she kind of
10:56
turned that into a Bible study and, and she would do that at,
11:00
at a local Country Club or a local church and these sorts of
11:04
things. And a lot of people who went to
11:05
them were not Catholic. They were non Catholics.
11:09
One of the one of the groups she did was at a local Episcopal
11:11
Church and was the women's group.
11:14
And so she began to really have this reputation for being able
11:18
to teach scripture and being able to really just be an
11:21
effective teacher and communicator.
11:24
And that got her notice by CBN, Christian Broadcasting Network
11:28
and and a couple of other Christian television apostolates
11:31
and they invited her to start creating content.
11:34
And so so she did. So this is in the 1970s or so
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and great, great story where, you know, she was shooting all
11:44
that content at a local television station in
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Birmingham. She didn't have a studio of her
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own yet. And so she she's producing her
11:54
content at this television station Birmingham, and she sees
11:57
that they're going to air a movie called The Word, which she
12:00
considered blasphemous to our Lord, and she considered an
12:03
insult to our Lord. And so she went to the general
12:07
manager and and she said, are you going to air this movie?
12:11
And, you know, it's a little bit out of like a scene out of, you
12:13
know, a television drama or something of, you know, yes, you
12:17
can't tell me what to air on my on my channel.
12:20
I'm not telling you what to air on your channel.
12:22
I'm just simply asking, are you going to air this?
12:24
Yes. Well, then I'm not going to
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produce my programs here anymore.
12:28
I can't thank you. And she turned around, started
12:30
walking out, and he shouted back at her.
12:32
Big mistake. If you walk out that door,
12:35
you're never going to do TV again.
12:38
And she spun around and said to him, I don't need you, I've got
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God, I'll build my own damn station.
12:45
She yes, yeah, yeah. And she and she walked out the
12:48
door and went to the went to the car and said to the sisters,
12:54
well, I don't know what I just did, but I may have really
12:56
messed it up but. I just got fired or I quit,
12:59
yeah. You know, wow, OK.
13:02
And so she went back to the monastery, you know, praying and
13:05
wondering what am I going to do? And when she got there and she
13:11
saw that she had a construction crew on on the monastery ground.
13:14
So they were building a garage for the monastery's cars.
13:18
And so she got out of the car and she went up to the
13:22
construction foreman who was this, you know, very country
13:26
Alabama guy. You know, Nelson was his name
13:29
was great guy. Great.
13:30
I got to know him. And she said, Nelson, I need you
13:34
to stop building the garage. It's like, OK, Mother, what
13:38
what's going on? What do you want me to build?
13:40
Said I need you to build me a television studio.
13:42
And so he kind of spit his tobacco onto the ground and
13:45
said, OK, mother, we can do that.
13:48
What what is a television studio look like?
13:51
And so she really didn't know, but but through one way or
13:54
another, she, she got the guys to build her a building for the
13:59
studio. And so she had this studio, you
14:04
know, and then was like, well, OK, we can start producing the
14:07
shows here, but you know, what am I going to do with all these
14:11
shows? And somebody said, well, mother,
14:13
you know, you ought to try cable TV.
14:16
And this is of course, by now, you know, late 70s, right around
14:20
1980. And cable TV was just kind of
14:23
being rolled out. And somebody said, well, you
14:27
know, there's, there's satellite and you and then you go to
14:30
cable. And I know that's interesting.
14:32
So she asked, you know, what do I need to do that?
14:35
And this person wisely advised her that well, you need a
14:39
satellite dish, you need a license and you need a lawyer
14:45
and said, OK, what do I need 1st?
14:47
And of course you need the lawyer first.
14:50
So she had no idea what what she was doing, but she had the had
14:54
the nuns getter of phone directory for lawyers in
14:58
Washington DC. So no Yelp.
15:00
No Yelp, no Google this. Is his phone.
15:02
Book. Nope, this old school phone
15:04
book. She looks under attorneys and
15:06
she says finds out a name. Bob Corazzini.
15:13
And Mother Angelica is Italian like us.
15:16
Exactly. Well, like you, not me, but have
15:18
any? Attack.
15:18
Just say you do, Michael, OK? Just say she told me once she
15:21
thought of me as an honorary Italian, so it was high praise
15:24
actually. I'm going.
15:25
With it. So she found Bob Corazzini.
15:28
She said, oh gosh, he's Italian, he's got to be good.
15:31
And she calls him up and she says, Mr. Corazzini, I'm Mother
15:35
Angelica. I'm a cloistered nun in
15:36
Birmingham, AL and I want to start a television station.
15:40
And there's crickets and he's excuse me, could you repeat
15:44
that? I'm Mother Angelica.
15:46
I'm a cloistered nun in Birmingham, AL and I want to
15:48
start a television station. And so they begin to talk and
15:54
and he all right, if you're serious, then I'll I'll come see
16:00
you. I have to visit one of my other
16:02
clients in Atlanta. Well, it turns out, you know,
16:06
his other client was Ted Turner, who was the founder of CNN, and
16:10
the whole Turner empire was. She looking under entertainment
16:14
lawyers in that phone book. So here's the here's that part
16:18
of the story. He says to her, though, at the
16:21
end, how did you find me? And she said, oh, I just saw
16:23
that saw you in the phone book and saw that your name was
16:27
Italian. And I thought you'd be good.
16:28
And he said, so you have no idea what kind of lawyer I am or what
16:31
kind of law I practice. And she said, no, I didn't
16:34
really know that there was a different kinds this well, I'm a
16:38
communications lawyer and the only thing I do is is
16:41
communications law. And so, you know, I'll be down
16:47
South, Mother Angelica goes, picks a name out of a book and
16:52
and calls this person and finds 1A communications lawyer was a
16:57
specialist in what she's trying to do.
17:00
And to the lawyer who's advising Ted Turner.
17:03
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17:07
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17:11
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this mission just as much. Can you share the story about
19:00
the purchase of her first satellite?
19:03
Sure. So.
19:03
I love the story. Yeah, yeah, it's, yeah.
19:05
It's a phenomenon, really. It it it how it was especially
19:09
inspirational for me because when I first went to EW Chance
19:12
Campus in Birmingham, AL, I was 19 and it was around that time I
19:16
learned the story and it gave me a new perspective on
19:20
entrepreneurship, quite frankly, as well as the work I was doing
19:23
with live action and trusting God.
19:24
So so I love this story. So she, so she's got the lawyer,
19:30
they're working on the license. She needs a satellite dish.
19:33
And so she has no money. You know, she's got, she's got
19:36
her garage turned studio, she's got $200 in the bank.
19:42
She's got 12 nuns and she's got some sheep and goats who are
19:46
wandering around outside the monastery grounds.
19:48
And that's, that's what she's got.
19:50
She, so she, she meets with the, the people from satellite
19:54
company and you know, and they're like, you know, well,
19:58
it'll be $600,000 for this dish and you know, we'll need, we'll
20:01
need. Money upfront and she's, well, I
20:05
don't have any money. And so like, what?
20:07
We can't do the deal? Well, you know, she has a
20:11
salesman get his boss on the phone from New York.
20:14
She gets on the phone and she convinces this executive to give
20:19
her this equipment, cash on demand.
20:21
So when when the truck rolls up, she's supposed to give the guy a
20:25
check and then he'll offload the satellite dish.
20:27
And how much was the check for? $600,000 So the day comes, she
20:32
gets the call, the satellite dishes on the way and he needs
20:35
the check before he can unload. And she's, I don't have the
20:37
money. And so like she did throughout
20:40
her life, she went to the Chapel and she went to our Lord and she
20:46
said, you know, I, I guess I didn't understand.
20:49
I guess I really messed this up. Lord, I, I, I don't have the
20:52
money. I guess it's over.
20:55
And the truck pulls up and the truck driver gets out and the
20:59
nuns are like, well, you know, I don't know what.
21:02
So. Yeah, well, there you go.
21:04
That's all she had. So she, she's in the Chapel.
21:07
The nuns come and say, mother, there's somebody on the phone
21:10
who wants to talk to you. She's, you know, sisters.
21:13
I mean, come on, this is all going on.
21:16
He's really insistent and he wants to talk to you.
21:18
And so she's all right, I'll talk to him.
21:21
So she gets on the phone with this gentleman and he's calling
21:23
her from his from his yacht in the Caribbean.
21:27
And he proceeds to tell her how he had a son who had a serious
21:31
problem with addiction and somehow someone gave his son one
21:38
of her mini books that she had written and that that inspired
21:43
him to turn his life around and to change his life and to get
21:47
treatment and so forth. And, and, and so he said, you
21:51
know, mother, I want to give you a gift.
21:53
You, you saved my son and I want to give you a gift.
21:57
And he said I just sold some stock so I'm going to send you
22:00
$600,000. And so without missing a beat,
22:05
she said, could you wire transfer that?
22:07
And so immediately he sent the, he sent the money to her.
22:11
She went out and told the sisters write the check and
22:15
offloaded the dish and there you have it.
22:19
And that dish is still there. If you saw in Birmingham, it's
22:22
still, it's still there, still operating, still part of our
22:26
transmissions. Amazing.
22:28
Yeah, yeah. But it's the story of of
22:30
Providence. I mean, that's, that's really I
22:33
shared in other another venue. You know, if if if George
22:39
Weigel, the author who always who wrote the biography of Pope
22:42
St. John Paul 2nd called him the
22:44
witness to hope. You know, I've always referred
22:47
to Mother Angelica as the witness to Providence because
22:51
her entire life was about relying on God's Providence,
22:55
doing doing the works that God asked her to do, but doing them
22:59
by relying completely and totally on his Providence.
23:02
And that's an example of that of, of trusting in God, of her
23:05
incredible faith and trusting God that he'd called her to do
23:09
this work. She knew it's what she needed to
23:12
do. She stepped out in faith, took
23:14
the risk, even though she didn't have the money, even though she
23:16
she, you know, knew she in that moment didn't have of what it
23:20
took to get that delivery. She trusted so deeply in our
23:24
Lord to know that He would provide what she needed.
23:27
And He did. And time and time again through
23:30
the years, that same story has repeated itself.
23:34
But I think it's so stunning about that story, and there's so
23:37
much more to her story, you know, beyond that.
23:39
But these are some of the early Providence moments of Providence
23:43
that she experienced is that she had such unshakable faith that
23:49
she was going to do these, I mean, legitimately crazy things
23:53
for her and her position to be doing these things.
23:56
But she did have a talent for it.
23:57
She did. She did.
23:59
She was. Very, very good at
24:00
communication. She was and she was hilarious.
24:03
And she received, I think, well, I think she received the graces
24:05
she needed. You know, I think our Lord gave
24:07
her the graces that she needed in order to do the work he had
24:11
given her was part of Providence.
24:13
You know, that she had the graces to be an effective
24:15
communicator, to be able to be, you know, this, this just
24:20
engaging and, you know, personality that, that you know,
24:24
and what you saw on air with Mother Angelica was who she was.
24:28
So it's, it's just, she was remarkable, remarkable woman
24:31
and, and really had such a profound and deep relationship
24:36
with our Lord as her spouse, as a religious, you know, she, she
24:41
understood what it meant to be a spouse of the Lord.
24:45
And, and that was for her deeply, real, deeply personal,
24:52
you know, and, and, and that, that was, I think a great
24:55
witness that I, that I saw from her throughout the time we were
24:59
together was, was just this, this profound love and trust for
25:03
our Lord. And so she would do anything,
25:06
you know, as, as we would to protect our spouse.
25:09
And so she sensed that someone was, you know, being
25:12
disrespectful or somehow denigrating her spouse.
25:18
She would, she would respond to that.
25:20
During all of these many years of working hand, you know, side
25:23
by side with her, she's a very saintly woman with this
25:27
unshakable faith and this driving vision.
25:31
Did you ever see her falter? Did you ever see her struggle
25:36
with doubt of any? Kind of course.
25:38
Yeah, of course. Well, you know, I think there
25:41
were, I think there were many times where she would make a
25:46
decision or we'd be considering some project or, you know,
25:49
there'd be something going on. And the great thing about mother
25:52
was that she she didn't, she didn't hesitate to reverse
25:57
course. If, if, if it was clear that
25:59
that was not the route that God wanted or there was a door that
26:03
closed, she immediately would, would say, all right, let's move
26:07
on to the other. You know, she used to talk about
26:09
the theology of risk. Yeah, yeah.
26:12
And, and it's, and it's fascinating.
26:14
And, and, you know, for her. So that would that would be that
26:18
we need to dare to take risks with trust and Providence.
26:24
So we can, we can, we should discern God's will, believe that
26:28
we have that properly understood and, and be free to move forward
26:34
knowing and trusting in Providence that if God asks us
26:37
to do the work, he'll provide it.
26:40
And she often talked about how, you know, in in contemporary
26:43
society, we've, we've sort of lost that theology of risk.
26:47
You know, we're too, we're too worried about what people think
26:50
of us. We're too worried about our
26:52
reputations or you know, how we appear come all of that and and
26:57
that because of that, we're we don't dare to take these risks
27:02
and, and that we need to take those risks for God.
27:05
We need to try to understand what he's calling us to do and
27:08
we need to say yes to that and we need to do that.
27:11
It's interesting. I, I shared earlier today the
27:15
story of how she, she had told me how in prayer one time she
27:20
asked God, why me? Lord, you know, and I think we
27:25
can all identify with that. And the sort of how many times
27:27
have we all had that conversation with God, why me?
27:29
Why me? And she, the answer she got back
27:33
in prayer was, well, Angelica, you are not the first that I
27:37
asked. In fact, there were many others.
27:40
You were the first who said yes. Meaning there was someone in
27:46
that communication she felt she had with God.
27:49
There was someone else God had in mind to do the EWTN or
27:53
whatever else it was going. To be called work right?
27:56
Turned him down and so he's like next.
27:57
He said no. I mean, it's an incredible idea.
28:00
Absolutely. That's her call, and So what
28:02
would have been her calling if that person had said yes?
28:05
To be a poor Claire? Not and probably.
28:08
He had to go all the way to the cloister.
28:09
There's so many and I wonder what that like in the world of
28:12
media. People were maybe afraid to be
28:14
as open about their faith. Yeah, absolutely.
28:17
And be uncompromising on moral and.
28:18
Cultural issues were afraid to take the risk because, you know,
28:21
if you're thinking about this in in 1980, you know, cable TV, you
28:29
know, really was in its infancy. You know, networks like CNNMTV,
28:37
those all happened, began to come into existence in 19801981.
28:42
EWB 10 was launched 2 weeks after MTV went on the air.
28:47
I know it's a different media world now.
28:48
And that sounds so bizarre, but you know, she was a pioneer.
28:53
She was, she was, she was among the first innovators anywhere to
29:00
use this, this technology of satellites and, and cable and so
29:05
forth to reach people. And so, you know, the idea that
29:12
this 58 year old nun in her monastery in Alabama was, you
29:17
know, going to create a television network and to be in
29:23
that space. And, you know, she had she, she
29:27
didn't go to college. She had no, you know, no issue.
29:31
Barely got through high school, by her own telling, she'd been a
29:36
nun for her whole adult life. And she steps out and says, I'm
29:42
going to create this, this television network.
29:45
As I said, no money, $200, some sheep and goats and and the
29:49
nuns, that's not exactly a Harvard Business School, you
29:53
know, pitch deck for a business, you know, and people thought she
29:57
was crazy. They thought she was nuts.
30:00
And in the industry, they thought, you know, she'll never
30:03
get it off the ground. It's not going to last six
30:05
months. There's not going to be any
30:07
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She had millions of viewers and she did a live audience show.
31:21
Yes. How many days a week?
31:23
So initially three days a week and then ultimately 2 days a
31:26
week. And she was doing this multiple
31:28
times a week every week. I mean how often would she break
31:31
and not do a show? Maybe, maybe two weeks out of
31:34
the year because she was just. Prolific.
31:36
And how many years in a row was she doing her show?
31:39
Well, let's see, so 1984 till her stroke in 2001, so you know.
31:46
So she's doing this show for almost 20 years day in and day
31:50
out, and she's doing it for a live audience.
31:52
And I know even today some of the clips go viral online and
31:57
you know, she's passed away. You know, she's not with us
31:59
anymore. But she, I think she captivated
32:02
people and she was fearless and speaking her mind.
32:06
I mean, she spoke about moral issues unapologetically,
32:09
abortion, marriage. And then she would also talk
32:12
about church stuff. I mean, the episcopate.
32:15
She Oh yes, she was not afraid to.
32:17
No, she spared, you know, nothing when it came to, you
32:21
know, criticizing what she saw were wrongs.
32:24
Was she accused of being mean? Yes.
32:27
Or snarky. Yes, yeah, all the time.
32:29
Yeah, to, you know, too aggressive too, you know,
32:33
unkind, uncharitable, which was all not true.
32:38
She had an unkind word though, right?
32:40
It wasn't that she was unkind, it was that not at all.
32:42
She could tell the truth and she would call people out when she
32:46
believed that they were leading people astray, particularly
32:49
bishops. I mean, that is, there was a
32:52
very famous, you know, situation where there was a particular
32:56
Bishop who had published a letter on the on the Eucharist,
33:00
and she thought that it was not correct.
33:05
She thought it was theologically flawed.
33:10
And so she criticized that, and she paid quite a price for that.
33:16
I mean, a lot of people at the very highest levels of the
33:19
church went after her for criticizing this particular
33:23
Bishop, but she never backed away from it.
33:27
Why? What was so important for her to
33:29
criticize? Who was the Bishop and what did
33:30
he say? What was wrong theologically?
33:32
Yeah, so, so it was Cardinal Mahoney, who at the time was the
33:36
Archbishop of Los Angeles. There's.
33:38
A There's a tough history there. The Diocese of Los Angeles
33:42
around the time of his. His leadership and so she she
33:48
believed that his pastoral letter was in her view
33:53
undermining the doctrine of transubstantiation and and had
33:58
some other concerns about it. But as I was saying earlier, you
34:03
know, to her, when she looked at our Lord in the Eucharist, she
34:07
saw her spouse, she saw her beloved in a in a deep and
34:13
profound way. And so when she perceived that
34:16
someone was in this case the cardinal through that pastoral
34:20
letter was, was somehow attacking her spouse or
34:23
demeaning her spouse, she responded, she responded, and
34:28
she wasn't afraid of, of pulling back.
34:31
She wasn't afraid of the fallout.
34:34
And, you know, I remember her saying at the time, you know,
34:36
well, what's the what's the worst that they can do to me?
34:40
Send me back to my monastery to live again as a cloistered nun?
34:45
That's the life I chose. That's the life I intended to
34:48
leave. She had nothing to lose.
34:50
Nothing to lose. She had nothing to lose and she
34:52
knew that and she knew that and, and, but, but it was that
34:56
dedication to the truth. You know, that's the core of
35:00
EWTN mission statement, a mission statement that she wrote
35:03
back in 1980 that talks about the advancement of truth.
35:08
And so to her, the truth was ultimately what needed to
35:12
prevail and what need to be 10 existed for.
35:16
And so she was not afraid of those fights.
35:18
She was not afraid to take on people.
35:22
You know, what's your point about why was she perceived as
35:24
being unkind or mean or what? And and there that was that
35:31
impression of her. But that was so not who she was.
35:35
She was incredibly loving, incredibly generous, incredibly
35:39
kind. She was like, like your
35:42
grandmother. It was like being with and
35:44
working with your grandmother. The thing that's interesting,
35:46
you know, as we, she did these shows and she did her last
35:51
program in, you know, 2001, so 2023 years ago was her last
35:57
program. But those shows are just still
36:01
as fresh and as impactful on people today as they were when,
36:05
you know, she first did them all those years ago.
36:09
And intriguingly, as we've expanded globally and, and she's
36:13
been translated into all of these languages, she has the
36:16
same kind of impact in places like Ukraine or Korea or Latin
36:23
America, or, you know, any of these countries has that same
36:28
impact there today that she did here in the United States those
36:34
years ago. And that's, that's really
36:36
fascinating. Do you know if she specifically
36:38
prayed for the talent and the grace to be effective in
36:42
communication and then for EWTN to reach more people?
36:45
What was her prayer like? Yeah.
36:47
What were the kind of what would be the top prayers that you knew
36:49
she heard her pray? Yeah, well, I think she, I think
36:52
she always prayed for, you know, for clarity in terms of her
36:57
Yeah. And, and, and how to, how to
36:59
serve our Lord through, through the work of EWTN.
37:04
She prayed for our EWTN family. The, the she always called our
37:08
audience was never our audience. And still we still talk about
37:11
our EWTN family. That's our our audience, those
37:14
who view us, consume our content.
37:17
And she treated them as though they were her family.
37:22
And so she would pray for that EWTN family, as with all the
37:26
nuns, you know, you had not just mother, but this whole community
37:30
of poor Claire nuns in front of the Blessed Sacrament who are
37:34
just, you know, praying 24/7 for EWTN, praying 24/7 for our
37:40
family of viewers around the world.
37:44
When I've just got a couple more questions.
37:46
Michael, thank you for doing this.
37:47
What was her death like? It was.
37:51
It was a very beautiful death at the end.
37:56
So she had been suffering the effects of a stroke and
38:00
hemorrhage. Friend.
38:01
She was confined to her cell, her room at the monastery for
38:06
many years because of that, confined to bed pretty much in
38:09
those last few years. And we came into Holy Week.
38:17
This is 8 years ago now. Came into Holy Week and, and
38:23
medically it wasn't looking good and most, most of the physicians
38:27
thought it was she was probably very near death.
38:30
We got to Good Friday and she went through intense, intense
38:35
suffering beginning around noon. And she was in tremendous,
38:43
tremendous pain, excruciating pain.
38:45
And she suffered until around 3:00.
38:50
And at 3:00 it all subsided. And we thought that would be the
38:56
day she died, but she didn't. It was two days later on Easter
39:00
Sunday, Easter Sunday afternoon. And it was a very peaceful and
39:05
beautiful death. And Pope Benedict at the time
39:12
commented that, you know, this was, this was the sign of a of a
39:16
life well lived, of a life of faith, a life of love and and
39:22
what a what a beautiful death. And it was.
39:24
It was it was tremendous. But as suffering had been her
39:28
constant companion throughout her life, even at the end, she
39:33
went through that period of intense suffering do.
39:35
You think she'll be canonized? I think so one day, yes, yes,
39:39
yeah, we're working. We're working towards that.
39:41
And I think there's, there's, well, I shouldn't say with such
39:45
certainty, but I believe that she is deserving of being a
39:50
Saint of the Church and being recognized by the Church as
39:52
such. And Michael, what does the
39:54
future look like for EWTN? I think the future is just as
39:58
strong as the past 40 years have been.
40:01
You know, it's different. It's a little different.
40:04
You know, the mission of EWTN remains unchanged.
40:07
We're still doing today what we did 43 years ago when she began
40:12
and and we're going to continue on that path.
40:15
But. We're, we're moving forward with
40:17
what we call the EWTN Next initiative, which is really
40:20
about the next generation of EWTN.
40:23
And how do we, how do we hand this work and this apostolate on
40:29
to the next generations? How do we reach more and more
40:33
people through next generation platforms and next generation
40:37
technologies? How do we reach more and more
40:39
people with the gospel? How do we engage new audiences,
40:43
new generations of people, so that they can benefit from what
40:47
EWTN does, just as all the the generations before have done?
40:51
So it's exciting. I'm very, I'm very happy and
40:54
very, very excited about where we're where we're headed.
40:57
And I know that Mother Angelica's doing her hardest
40:59
work now advocating for us from heaven.
41:01
So I was going. To say they say you work harder
41:04
in heaven, absolutely interceding for those here on
41:06
earth. So I.
41:07
Think that's very. Thank you.
41:07
Mother Angelica. Amen.
41:09
Thank you Michael for answering your call and Dot's call.
41:12
Oh God bless you. Thank you.
41:13
A huge thank you to our partner. EWTNEWTN is the world's leading
41:19
Catholic network, reaching millions with the truth about
41:21
the faith, entertainment and news.
41:24
Check themout@ewtn.com.