How St. Maximilian and Mother Angelica Came to Work in Catholic Media
The lives of St. Maximilian Kolbe and Mother Angelica, foundress of EWTN, have many similarities: They were shaped by their upbringing and social backgrounds, as well as religious formation and the preparation by God to undertake the mission he had indicated to them; God’s guidance and obedience to God’s providence; and their works, Niepokalanów and EWTN, respectively.
Rita Rizzo, later Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation, was born in 1923 in Canton, Ohio. Canton was a small industrial town, where steel prevailed and immigrants could count on work in one of the numerous factories. The development of the city was accompanied by a rise in crime; the slums located in the south part of town were infamous for their corruption and violence. Smoky chimneys, a multiethnic society and a chronic lack of money, which affected almost everyone, created a unique atmosphere in the 1920s in which Rizzo was born.
A few thousand kilometers east of Canton, Zduńska Wola, Poland, could easily have been an American city in the early 20th century. It also had its industrial “king” — the textile industry. The inhabitants of both cities were similar — immigrants from different parts of the world whose fates were connected by hope for a better life. At the turn of the 20th century, the development of the Polish city accelerated. Small businesses and workshops were replaced with expanded factories, and, in search of work, poor peasants and workers started to come to Zduńska Wola en masse. It was in Zduńska Wola, surrounded by huge factories and modest weaving workshops, that Rajmund (Raymond) Kolbe was born in 1894.
Little Rita did not have an easy start. Her mother, Mae Gianfrancesco, who came to Ohio from Italy, fell in love with a slightly older and, at first sight, serious man, John Rizzo. Eventually, the couple got married; the news of a child became for him an opportunity to physically assault his pregnant wife. Those beatings, insults, betrayals and a lack of interest in supporting the family eventually became the reason for their divorce, which took place a few years later. Constant stress, lack of independence and even the inability to enforce her modest alimony led her to a deep mental crisis, depression and suicidal thoughts. In such a situation, the daughter could not count on the mother. For 7-year-old Rita, who was called the daughter of divorcees, her first years of her life were not kind to her. But the trials led her to the miraculous.
