Canton is known among American sports fans as the home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but the city also could stake a claim as the state’s preeminent Catholic pilgrimage spot.

Two women of faith with roots in the northeast Ohio city and whose lives have touched countless souls are remembered there at sites that honor their holiness. 

Located less than a mile from the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Mother Angelica Museum at 4365 Fulton Drive N.W. attracts thousands of visitors each year who come there to learn about the early life of the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration nun who founded in 1981 what has become the largest Catholic media company in the world, the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN).

The Rhoda Wise House and Grotto in Canton is a popular spot for pilgrims. Photo courtesy Rhoda Wise House

Several miles across town, the Rhoda Wise House and Grotto at 2337 25th St. N.E. draws pilgrims from throughout the world. The humble Catholic convert was healed of serious infirmities after what she described as visits from Jesus and St. Therese of Lisieux (the Little Flower) in the late 1930s and ’40s. Wise, who died in 1948, has been declared by the Church a Servant of God, which is the first step on the road to possible sainthood. 

A short drive from the Rhoda Wise House and Grotto is the Sancta Clara Monastery, where Mother Angelica professed her final religious vows and spent 17 years of religious life before going to Alabama and eventually launching EWTN. There are currently 13 women living in the cloistered community of Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration located at 4200 N. Market Ave.

The chapel at the Sancta Clara Monastery, where Mother Angelica once lived, is open daily in Canton for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and Mass.      CT photo

Other Catholic attractions in Canton include St. Anthony Church at 1530 11th St. S.E., where Rita Rizzo, the future Mother Angelica, received her First Holy Communion, confirmation and call to religious life; and the historic St. Peter Church at 726 Cleveland Ave. N.W., where Msgr. George Habig served as pastor and as a spiritual adviser to Rita Rizzo and Rhoda Wise.

Some pilgrims make an additional stop at St. Peter Catholic Cemetery, where Wise is buried. The cemetery is located approximately 12 blocks north of St. Peter Church.

The Mother Angelica Museum and the Rhoda Wise House and Shrine serve as reminders of the powerful impact that these two women whose lives were interconnected have had on countless individuals.

When the future Mother Angelica was growing up in Canton, she suffered from a seemingly incurable stomach ailment that left her unable to eat. Her mother brought her to Rhoda Wise’s home, and it was there that she received healing from Jesus, paving the way for her to later enter religious life and eventually found EWTN.

Barbara Gaskell, director and founder of the Mother Angelica Museum, has written a book, “The Amazing Life of Rita Rizzo: The Early Years of Mother Mary Angelica” that provides details of the nun’s upbringing in Canton. 

Born in 1923 in a working-class neighborhood, young Rita was raised by her mother a block from St. Anthony Church. She and her mother struggled through hard times during the Roaring ’20s and then the Depression after her father abandoned them.

The Mark Ark of the Covenant chapel at the Mother Angelica Museum in Canton. CT photos

The details of Mother Angelica’s early life are documented at the museum housed within the St. Raphael Center, a building that also houses a bookstore, a Mary Ark of the Covenant chapel where Mass is celebrated on Wednesdays, meeting space and the Living Bread Catholic Radio Network. 

The museum offers a self-guided tour with short audio presentations describing various aspects of Mother Angelica’s life in Canton from her youth through her time at the Sancta Clara Monastery and later her establishment of EWTN.

On the grounds behind the center, visitors can pray at an outdoor grotto dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes. A rosary garden, a monument to the unborn and a statue of St. John Vianney provide additional opportunities for reflection and prayer.

This fall, a Mother Angelica monument is planned that will be visible from busy Fulton Drive, Gaskell said. 

After Mother Angelica died at age 92 on March 27, 2016, in Hanceville, Alabama, there was renewed interest in the nun’s life. To accommodate the many visitors, a day tour of the various sites around Canton was offered.

The guided tours lasted until 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The shutdown allowed Gaskell time to organize the museum in a manner that would allow for the self-guided tours.

When interest in the various Canton pilgrimage sites picked back up in 2021, self-guided tours to the various spots were put in place that allowed busloads and individuals to drive to each location.

And tourists have continued coming. Some recent visitors from outside the state have traveled from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas, New York and California.

“They can come here and learn the story,” Gaskell said. “We’ve got the tour laid out for them, and they know what they are going to see. It’s been working out very well.

“We usually have them go to two other places, the Rhoda Wise house and the monastery, because the parishes (St. Anthony and St. Peter) are hard to get into.”

Many pilgrims bring their prayer intentions to the Rhoda Wise House and Grotto in Canton. CT photo  

At the Rhoda Wise house, countless healings have been reported and attributed to the mystic before and after her death. Visitors to the home where she lived and to a grotto erected on the property have included priests, seminarians and laypeople from the Diocese of Columbus.

Inside the house, which was a shack next to a dump when Wise and her husband, George, moved there after the Great Depression hit, pilgrims can see where she lived and was cured of a serious wound on her stomach and a foot problem, and sit in a chair where she reported to have seen Jesus when she was healed.

There’s an altar for prayer, a statue of the baby Jesus that she said she witnessed come to life and a framed, blood-soaked dress from the stigmata she endured after she was healed.

Grotto of the Sacred Heart and Little Flower at the Rhoda Wise House in Canton. CT photo

Adjacent to the house is the Grotto of the Sacred Heart and Little Flower that is open to people of all faiths and no faith to pray and offer intentions.

A July 7 Mass at St. Peter Church on the anniversary of Wise’s death was celebrated by Bishop David Bonnar of the Diocese of Youngstown and included an update on her cause for beatification and canonization, which would be the next steps in the Church’s examination of her life.

Dr. Valentina Culurgioni, the new postulator in Rome for Wise’s cause who is in charge of overseeing the process, attended the Mass. She came from Italy to provide an update on the complicated procedure that requires verified miracles attributed to a candidate before he or she is declared venerable, blessed or a saint.

Wise was raised Protestant and converted to Catholicism during her 10-month stay at Mercy Hospital in Canton in the late 1930s to treat an open wound on her abdomen that would not heal. She developed a devotion to the rosary and to St. Therese while spending time with the sisters and priests who ministered there, and in 1939 she received the sacrament of confirmation in the hospital before being sent home to die.

As she lay suffering at home in bed, she was healed two months later in July 1939 after a visit from Jesus and St. Therese. Over the next nine years, she reported 15 apparitions of Jesus and 20 of the Little Flower. From 1942 to 1944, she endured the stigmata, the wounds of the crucified Christ, on her hands and feet, and, in 1945, she began bleeding profusely from wounds on her forehead. 

Her final reported visit from Christ came on June 28, 1948, 10 days before her death, when she said He told her that more people needed to pray the rosary daily.

The Rhoda Wise house is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on First Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The grotto is open daily from 8 a.m. to dusk. More information is available at https//rhodawise.com.

The Mother Angelica Museum and chapel and the St. Raphael Books and Gifts store are open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. Visit www.motherangelicamuseum.com for additional details.

Sancta Clara Monastery offers daily Mass, including Sundays, at 9 a.m. The chapel is open to the public for private Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament each day from 7:15 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The website is www.poorclares.org.