How Mother Angelica Revved Up Alabama's Tourism Industry

ALABAMA.COM
By Greg Garrison

In this 1999 photo, Mother Angelica stands in the piazza at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, a pilgrimage center at Our Lady of the Angels Monastery Farm in Hanceville, Ala. She died at the monastery on Easter Sunday, March 27, 2016. (Hal Yeager/AL.com File)

ALABAMA---When Mother Angelica built EWTN in Alabama in 1981 and began hosting a live TV talk show that aired nationwide, she welcomed viewers to come and sit in the studio audience on Tuesday nights. She built it, and they came. Mother Angelica, who died on Easter Sunday at 92, created a cottage industry for tourism in Alabama. Her studio in Irondale became a popular destination for Catholics from all over the country and around the world. [link]

In 1999, Mother Angelica points out a biblical scene on one of the bronze doors of the cathedral-style chapel at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament and Our Lady of the Angels Monastery Farm.

The great bronze doors were designed and crafted in Spain; they display original relief sculptures of the Seven Joys and Seven Sorrows of Mary. Smaller doors dedicated to Ss. Francis and Clare were also created at Talleres de Arte Granda.