Mother Angelica and EWTN

Faith is one foot on the ground, one foot in the air, and a queasy feeling in the stomach.

– Mother Angelica, founder of EWTN

Pay attention to the Shroud of Turin and sooner or later you will encounter a story about it on the Eternal Word Television Network, EWTN. Journalist Renée K. Gadoua has just written, How a Nun Turned a Monastery Garage into a Global Catholic News Network, a wonderful article about Mother Angelica (pictured) and the network she founded. It appears in Religion & Politics. The Shroud of Turin was a topic of the very first broadcast in 1981.

By the spring of 1980, Mother Angelica not only had her own television studio—she had formed her own network, Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN). During its launch on August 15, 1981, EWTN was on the air for four hours, reaching 300,000 cable television subscribers. The first broadcast featured “Mother Angelica Presents,” with a live audience; a documentary on the Shroud of Turin; a rerun of Catholic cleric Fulton Sheen’s “Life is Worth Living”; an interview with Mother Teresa; and a Russian dance festival hosted by Orson Welles. “We’re after the man in the pew, the woman who is suffering from heartache, the child who is lonely,” Mother Angelica told The New York Times in 1981.

Religion & Politics is a project of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, named for former United States Senator from Missouri and ordained Episcopal priest, John C. Danforth.

Photo is an AP photo found in the article in Religion & Politics.