In addition to the hundreds of thousands of Franciscans serving around the globe, including religious and laity, the Franciscan movement, since the time of its founder, has given birth to countless apostolates. These ministries, with their Franciscan connection, continue to spread the gospel in unique and significant ways, including the media. One of the greatest examples of this is the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), founded by a feisty Franciscan “Poor Clare” nun, Mother Angelica.
In its 45th year, EWTN has grown to being the largest Catholic media organization in the world. EWTN has 11 global TV channels and numerous regional channels, which are broadcasted in multiple languages, 24 hours a day, seven days a week to more than 440 million homes in more than 160 countries and territories. EWTN has expanded its media outreach over the years and their platforms don’t stop with television. It also includes radio services transmitted through SIRIUS/XM, iHeart Radio, and over 600 domestic and international AM and FM radio affiliates, as well as a worldwide shortwave radio service. It’s been an honor of a lifetime for me to host EWTN’s morning talk show, Catholic Connection, for over 25 years. EWTN also has one of the most visited Catholic websites in the United States. Plus, in 2015 EWTN opened a book publishing division, EWTN Publishing, to expand Mother Angelica’s mission. EWTN’s news and social media outreach is global. EWTN News’s multilingual news service has grown to be regarded as one of the most well-respected catholic news sources worldwide.
Fr. Joseph Mary Wolfe, EWTN’s chaplain and one of the founding members of the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word, generously wrote an entire chapter in my new book, Italy’s Shrines and Wonders (VOL. II): Discovering Sacred Spaces and Fascinating Places in the Life of St. Francis of Assisi, beautifully explaining in vivid detail the amazing similarities and “Franciscan Connection” between Mother Angelica, foundress of EWTN, and St. Francis of Assisi. Below are two of many similarities that we can reflect on during this Jubilee Year of St. Francis as we celebrate this week’s Feast of the Assumption of Mary, EWTN’s 45th year, as well as the upcoming 800th anniversary of St. Francis’ death this October.
“EWTN CEO Michael Warsaw calls Mother Angelica a ‘witness to providence.’ Television is an expensive endeavor, and Mother Angelica had but two hundred dollars with which to start a television network but she trusted that God, Who had called her ‘to do the ridiculous, would do the miraculous.’ One of the great miracles of EWTN is that God’s providence has never been lacking in its forty-five years of existence and global growth. St. Francis knew that when he trusted in God’s promises and providence, he was on the most solid ground; this was why he had such an aversion to trust in money and other material things. God’s providence provides. St. Francis was not disappointed: The order he founded numbered in the thousands by the time of his death at the age of forty-four. Mother Angelica, inspired by the example of St. Francis, named the monastery she founded in Alabama ‘Our Lady of the Angels,’ which is the name of the famous Portiuncula, where the Franciscans began, took shape, and grew. That little chapel in Assisi continues to be a place of pilgrimage and of obtaining the special graces of the Portiuncula Indulgence. The little chapel in Irondale, Alabama (Our Lady of the Angels Chapel), where the televised Mass and other devotions have been broadcast for decades has brought grace and consolation to countless souls throughout the world.
SHARING IN THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST
St. Francis often contemplated the sufferings of Christ and two years before his death, as he prayed on Mount La Verna, he asked for two favors: first, that he would suffer, as much as he was able, the sufferings Christ suffered in His Passion; and second, that he would have burning in his heart, as much as he was able, the love with which Christ went to His Passion. St. Bonaventure, in his biography of St. Francis, wrote that Francis received both, for he received the wounds of Christ in the stigmata and a new fire within his heart. Suffering was always a part of Mother Angelica’s life, in a variety of ways: the suffering of a broken home; of experiencing the rejection of being from a divorced household; of chronic pain and the limitations caused by her back injury; and so on. And yet Mother Angelica understood and taught the hidden value of sufferings united to those of Christ. She suffered a debilitating stroke on Christmas Eve 2001 and was taken home on Easter Sunday 2016. Indeed, her life, like that of St. Francis, resembled the suffering Savior’s in many ways and bore lasting fruit for many souls.
ENTRUSTMENT TO MARY
The three orders founded by St. Francis (male and female religious and lay members) all began at Our Lady of the Angels of the Portiuncula under the protection of Our Lady. Mary is, in fact, the Patroness and Queen of the Franciscan Order. The nuns and friars at EWTN include Mary’s name in their own religious names, and they renew their consecration to her daily. EWTN, in fact, first became an incorporated legal entity in 1980 on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, whom Pope St. John Paul II named the “Star of the New Evangelization.” The network was launched on the air in 1981 on the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. EWTN airs the Rosary four times a day and at other times of special need, such as during the Covid crisis. Indeed, Mother Angelica and the staff at EWTN understand that the Blessed Virgin Mary is ‘His Tabernacle’ (as St. Francis puts it) and we are safely guided under her mantle to ‘do whatever her Son tells us’ (see John 2:5).”