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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
The extraordinary saga of Mother Angelicawho passed away on Easter 2016founder of the multimilliondollar Eternal Word Television Network and the most influential Catholic woman in America according to Time magazine

In 1981 the year after Ted Turner founded CNN a simple nun using merely her entrepreneurial instincts and 200 launched what would become the world s largest religious media empire in the garage of a Birmingham Alabama monastery Under her guidance the Eternal Word Television Network grew at a staggering pace both in viewership and in influence to where it now reaches over a hundred million viewers in hundreds of countries around the globe

Born Rita Rizzo in Canton Ohio in 1923 Mother Angelica was abandoned by her father and raised in poverty by a mother who suffered from suicidal depressions As a young woman Rita developed severe abdominal pain that doctors dismissed as a nervous condition but when she sought the prayers of a local mystic her symptoms disappeared Awakened to the power of prayer she vowed to dedicate her life to God and became a cloistered nun expecting to spend her life hidden from the world But Ritas faith soon compelled her to unlikely endeavors from establishing a monastery in Alabama to starting the worlds first Catholic cable network Relying solely on Gods providence Mother Angelica built an empire without concern for budgets or fundraising campaigns achieving what even the highest levels of the Catholic Church had been unable to do

Raymond Arroyo combines his journalist s objectivity and eye for detail with more than five years of exclusive interviews with Mother Angelica He traces Mother Angelicas tortured rise to success and exposes for the first time the fierce opposition she faced both inside and outside of her church It is an inspiring story of survival and proof that one womans faith can move more than mountains