I’ve been thinking of Mother Angelica over the past few days. If you don’t know her name, she founded EWTN, the global news network. It’s an improbable story, only possible through amazing grace and faith.

As you may know, the network continues. I consider it family, as I met her early in life via cable, had one of the last interviews with her, have good friends there — including one who died on All Saints Day 2020, whose youngest, my goddaughter, just saw Rome for the first time this Easter.

EWTN been a blessing to souls, not all of them Catholic. There’s a former 1980s model, Paul Darrow, who frequented the trendiest bathhouses and, by his telling, should have died of AIDS many times over — based on the amount of illicit sex of all varieties he engaged in, and friends he had who died of the disease. Paul and I were both at Mother Angelica’s funeral Mass in Alabama. Not only had she gotten his attention one night when he was flipping the channels, he had had the chance to thank her and pray with her before she left her earthly pilgrimage. (His journey includes eventually going to Confession and accusing himself of every deadly sin. Technically he had not killed, he and the priest ascertained.)

A little bit of a different life, but the worldwide best-selling Purpose Driven Life author and megachurch pastor Rick Warren and his wife, Kay, were brought to the Divine Mercy devotion — a chaplet prayed at 3 o’clock (the hour Christ traditionally died) — by landing on EWTN at the right time.

Anyway, Mother has been on my mind because she died on Easter Sunday, 2016. She had been suffering most of her life, mostly bed-ridden for the last decade of her life.

Then Pope Francis died in the hours after Easter Sunday.

Pope Francis had made thinly veiled comments about EWTN, particularly because of critiques of goings-on in his papacy on Raymond Arroyo’s show.

As I was reminiscing about being in Rome for Pope Francis’s election, I remembered New York priest and canon lawyer Father Gerry Murray, who frequently appears on Raymond’s The World Over, analyzing things happening in the Vatican and throughout the church. We were at a dinner together of mostly Americans in Rome the night or two after Pope Francis was elected — after numerous TV and radio hits and pieces filed. He broke his Lenten fast from alcohol to celebrate that we had a new holy father. There was joyful, prayerful expectation all around.

I found, too, one of the medals I searched for in Roman shops that week with Raymond Arroyo. We wanted St. Francis medals to have Pope Francis bless. All around the eternal city, men and women were giddy that the new pope had taken the name of their beloved saint from Assisi. I think we both had them on hand when the new pope had an audience with journalists.

I wear my medal now, while watching EWTN coverage, including seeing Cardinal Mahony still on the global stage. Mother Angelica was a necessary thorn in Mahony’s side when he was in charge of the Los Angeles diocese. In many ways, Mother Angelica and Pope Francis had similarities — in style, in temperament, in commitment to Christ and His Church. They would have undoubtedly been seen as of different political stripes. And yet, they still touched hearts, opening room for grace and conversion.

As we move forward, there’s a lot to learn still from Angelica and Francis. I hope they are in positions to be rooting for us. (Interceding, really.) Divine Mercy is definitely a meeting point in the fruits of their witness. May we continue to learn and follow in their following of the Gospel. And may we not do ourselves too much of a disservice of narrowing categorizing people with Western political terms. Beware of ideological silos, is how Pope Francis might put it. With a bride and daughter’s confidence, Mother Angelica would implore us to simply go to Jesus Christ.