“I was in England. It was a busy afternoon, and I was devoting myself to a thousand things when the phone rang. I picked it up almost absentmindedly, and almost before I could say hello, a sharp voice rang in my ear. “I’ve already made eight calls trying to find you, and now I’ve finally tracked you down in England. Anyway, I want to get you on our program.”
I had no idea who was calling, although the voice was certainly American and not English. Was this a wrong number or perhaps a crank call? I was tempted to hang up. The voice continued speaking as I tried to decide what to do, and slowly it began to dawn on me: This was Mother Angelica. She was not well-known at that time, a woman whose name I had heard but whom I had never met.
Thus began a relationship that has lasted for twenty-five years.
My first visit to EWTN occurred not long after this phone call, and it was nothing short of astonishing. The convent of the cloistered Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration was attached to the television studio, which was very primitive at the time. Nevertheless, Mother was moving full steam ahead. At that point she was ready to go full-time with her broadcasting, and EWTN was on the verge of becoming the largest religious television network in the entire world. A network started by a cloistered Franciscan nun! As we say in Jersey City, “Go figure!'”
At the end of her life Mother Angelica suffered several strokes which left her bedridden.
“I am sure she had made of that suffering a beautiful offering to God. It is suffering transformed into prayer, and I believe it plays a large part in causing EWTN to continue to be the incredible experience it is for millions of people, not only in the United States but in Europe, Latin America, and even Asia. In many places in the world, even in places in which few people speak English, people have come up to me and told me they’ve seen me on EWTN. None of this would have happened without Mother Angelica. EWTN wouldn’t have happened without Mother Angelica.”