HANCEVILLE, Alabama - Mother Mary Angelica, a Roman Catholic nun who started a global religious media empire in a garage in Alabama, has died. She was 95.

EWTN Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Michael P. Warsaw said Sunday that the founder of the Eternal Word Television Network died at the monastery where she lived about 45 miles north of Birmingham.

Mother Angelica had been in declining health after suffering a series of strokes over the last 15 years.

Mother Angelica was born Rita Rizzo in Ohio in 1923. She entered the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration monastery in Cleveland at age 21 and joined other nuns at a new monastery in Alabama in 1962.

The nun began broadcasting a religious TV show from the monastery garage in 1981. That grew into Eternal Word Television Network, a worldwide TV, radio and publishing operation.