[4] She hosted her own show, Mother Angelica Live, until health issues led to her retirement in September 2001.

Christmas and Easter programming; the installation Masses of bishops and cardinals; coverage of World Youth Days; and Papal visits, deaths, funerals, conclaves, and elections are also presented.

After she gave an interview on then-Christian station WCFC (Channel 38) in Chicago, she decided she wanted her own network.

[14] Mother Angelica purchased satellite space and EWTN began broadcasting on August 15, 1981, with four hours of daily programming, which included her own show, Mother Angelica Live (aired bi-weekly), a Sunday Mass, and reruns of older Catholic programs such as Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen's Life Is Worth Living.

At this point, EWTN began broadcasting the praying of the rosary on a daily basis and added a number of educational shows.

[17] In 1996, Mother Angelica announced that EWTN would make its radio signal available via satellite to AM and FM stations throughout the United States at no cost.

[19] Current radio programs include Open Line in which callers can have their questions regarding the Catholic Faith answered.

A reflection of its size and influence is that it has 30 staff members covering the Vatican alone, "far outnumbering other English-language media outlets".

[13][24][note 1] Mother Angelica developed the fund raising slogan for viewers, "Please keep us between your gas and electric bill!

From then until her death on Easter Sunday of 2016, she led a cloistered life at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama.

The shift was apparent in the daily televised Masses, which, in 1992, began incorporating Latin into the liturgy and gradually eliminated contemporary music.

[27] Often, EWTN airs special programming – holiday-specific programs; coverage of the deaths of Supreme Pontiffs; Papal conclaves, Papal elections, inaugurations, and visits; Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Easter Masses; installations of bishops, archbishops, and cardinals; and World Youth Days.

[30][31] Until 1993, EWTN head Mother Angelica showed little propensity for politically conservative culture warfare, stating for example on October 27, 1992, "I believe people should vote pro-life, but life is everything: the elderly, the born, the unborn, all of us.

Mother Angelica denounced the display as "an abomination to the Eternal Father" and proceeded with a half-hour criticism of the "liberal church in America" and the post Second Vatican Council reforms.

"[1] Among other things she opined that "We're just tired of you constantly pushing anti-God, anti-Catholic and pagan ways into the Catholic Church.

"[32] Then-Archbishop of Milwaukee Rembert Weakland criticized Mother Angelica's comment as "one of the most disgraceful, un-Christian, offensive, and divisive diatribes I have ever heard".

"[33] The event is believed by some (National Catholic Reporter) to mark Mother Angelica's emergence "as a culture warrior", as prior to it she had sometimes "criticized feminists" but "rarely, if ever, attacked the ecclesiastical hierarchy".

"[2] In 1997, Mother Angelica publicly criticized Cardinal Roger Mahony, then Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, for his pastoral letter on the Eucharist, "Gather Faithfully Together: A Guide for Sunday Mass", which she perceived as lacking emphasis on transubstantiation (the presence of Christ in the Eucharist):[34] "I'm afraid my obedience in that diocese would be absolutely zero.

Bishop Foley stated that the practice of the priest celebrating ad orientem "amounts to making a political statement and is dividing the people.

"[37] In 2000, Archbishop Roberto González Nieves of San Juan, Puerto Rico, performed an apostolic visitation of EWTN.

Nieves focused on three issues – the actual ownership of the network; the associated monastery's right to donate property to EWTN; and, since she had never been elected, the authority of Mother Angelica.

[38] However, before Nieves could write his final report, Mother Angelica resigned from her positions as EWTN CEO and board chair.

[1] On a 2021 trip to Slovakia, Francis complained in a "meeting with Jesuits" that "a large Catholic television channel that has no hesitation in continually speaking ill of the pope," and that "they are the work of the devil [...] I have also said this to some of them.

"[1] Recurring guests on the weekly EWTN show "The World Over", hosted by EWTN anchor Raymond Arroyo, include: [...] prominent Francis critics, including Cardinal Raymond Burke, who co-signed a list of dubia about Pope Francis' openness to allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion in some cases, and Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who was not renewed for another term by Pope Francis in 2017.

Two years later, Cardinal Müller published a "manifesto of faith" in the EWTN-owned Catholic News Agency and other outlets that have been critical of the pope, arguing against Francis' teaching on Communion for the divorced and remarried.

Gerald Murray (a New York priest, former U.S. Navy chaplain and canon lawyer), and Robert Royal (a Catholic author who founded the D.C. think tank the Faith and Reason Institute and the blog "The Catholic Thing")—that according to Colleen Dulle of America magazine, "riffs on one another's criticisms of the pope and has given uncritical interviews to anti-Francis guests like Steve Bannon, who argued on air that his own populist politics better represent Catholic social teaching than Pope Francis does".

[41] Purvis was interviewed by the New York Times concerning the controversy, and EWTN initially expressed support for her and said the show would continue to be produced despite the suspension (which was in fact permanent).