Top photo caption: An undated photo shows Rhoda Wise, who was declared a servant of God in 2017, with Rita Antoinette Rizzo (right), who later became Mother Angelica, founder of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN). According to reports, a teenage Rizzo was taken to see Wise around 1943 in hopes of a healing for her debilitating stomach pain caused by a rare condition, which were suddenly resolved after she followed Wise’s instructions to pray a novena. OSV News photo/courtesy of the Rhoda Wise House and Grotto
By Anna Dougherty, OSV News
OSV News — Ohio resident Rhoda Wise was a laywoman, a wife and an adoptive mother — but she was also a mystic, stigmatist, and now the candidate for sainthood could be declared venerable by the Church.
Wise’s cause for canonization took a significant step forward July 7 when the Diocese of Youngstown, Ohio, announced that the official “positio” — a comprehensive document detailing her life of virtue and alleged miracles — was submitted to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.
The dicastery will investigate her life and determine whether she should be declared venerable and it should recommend the Pope make that declaration.
Wise, declared a servant of God in 2017 when the late Bishop George V. Murry of Youngstown opened her sainthood cause, was born into a Protestant family of modest means in 1888, according to EWTN’s program “They Might Be Saints,” which aired July 7, 2022. She endured a life of hardship, including infertility, the loss of one of two daughters whom she adopted and an alcoholic husband who could not hold down a job.
In the 1930s, Wise suffered several health challenges, including a 39-pound ovarian cyst and a broken foot that would not heal properly. During one of her stays in the hospital, she befriended the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine, who told her how to pray the rosary and told her about St. Thérèse of Lisieux, to whom she became “greatly devoted.” She was received into the Catholic Church on Jan. 1, 1939, according to her diary.
On May 8, 1939, doctors at Mercy Hospital in Canton, Ohio, sent her home to die. The painful wound in her abdomen from her abdominal surgery had become infected and multiple surgical attempts to remove an abscess had failed. Shortly after she returned home, she began having visions of Christ and later, St. Thérèse.
After a vision of both Christ and St. Thérèse on June 28, 1939, she wrote in her diary that she was miraculously healed.
“I was astounded to find that the wound on my abdomen was entirely closed,” she wrote. “Great was the rejoicing of my relatives and friends and in the days that followed a large number of people came to my home to see me.”
She continued to have visions until her death in 1948, and beginning on Good Friday, April 3, 1942, she experienced the stigmata every First Friday from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. through 1945, according to the Rhoda Wise House and Grotto website.
The bleeding stigmata appeared on Wise’s forehead and continued to appear and bleed at intervals over the next two years. In 1943, bleeding stigmata appeared on her hands and feet as well as her forehead. The bleeding stigmata were witnessed by many visitors to the Wise home.
As her reputation for holiness spread, many visitors came to speak with her and pray outside of her house, which continues to be a place of pilgrimage to this day.
Ryan Schweitzer, who has served as the assistant director of the Wise home and nonprofit in Canton since the fall of 2023, said that in 2025 alone 5,500 people visited the home from 19 countries. Healing — both physical and spiritual — are commonplace at the home, Schweitzer said.
“Our Lord had told Rhoda that there would be many more miracles here on the site, many more wonderful miracles than the ones that she experienced, and our Lord has held true to his word,” Schweitzer told OSV News.
In 2018, Dr. Mark Shoag was diagnosed with stage 4 sarcoma and given six months to live. As chemotherapy ravaged his body, his wife, Betsy Shoag, read him Wise’s diary, according to the EWTN program.
One day, as Mark was too weak to leave his bed, Betsy brought his shirt to the Wise house to pray for a miracle. When she returned, she found Mark alert and asking to leave the house.
“I went from somebody who believed that science could explain everything to somebody who believes … that there are miracles,” said Mark, who outlived his prognosis by eight years before dying in 2024.
EWTN has its origins in a miracle that happened at Wise’s house.
As a teenager, Mother Angelica — then Rita Antoinette Rizzo — was taken to see Wise in hopes of a healing for her debilitating stomach pain caused by a rare condition called ptosis of the stomach, according to ETWN.
Wise told her to pray a novena, according to the ETWN program about Wise, after which her stomach ailment suddenly resolved. This miracle changed the trajectory of her life, eventually propelling her to become a religious and then the foundress of EWTN. She joined the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, taking the name Sister Mary Angelica of the Annunciation, and in 1981 launched what is now a global Catholic media organization.
“If there hadn’t been a Rhoda Wise, there wouldn’t have been a Mother Angelica, because her healing led to her vocation and to EWTN,” said Karen Sigler, who directs the Rhoda Wise Shrine.
Father John Sheridan of the Youngstown Diocese, liaison for Wise’s cause, said that Wise’s “positio” will be reviewed by two Vatican commissions, the theological commission and the historical commission.
“The historical commission will evaluate the life and the times that Rhoda Wise lived in, growing up in the United States in Ohio beginning in the 1880s and then living through the Depression and the First and Second World War,” Father Sheridan told OSV News. “The theologians will be evaluating the claims that she was a mystic, that she experienced stigmata.”
These commissions will separately make recommendations on the case to the bishops, cardinals and experts who make up the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. The dicastery can then recommend to the Pope he make a declaration of her heroic virtues and the Church give her the title of venerable.
The next steps in the sainthood process are beatification and canonization. In general, each step needs a verified miracle having occurred through Wise’s intercession.
If she is declared a saint someday, Father Sheridan said she might be the patron of those struggling with addictions, since her husband was ultimately healed from his alcoholism. She also could be a patron of housewives or adoptive mothers.
“Rhoda Wise exemplifies … the virtue of patient endurance,” Sheridan said. “She lived a life of poverty, even though many people were flocking to her house she never, never tried to enrich herself. She continued to live in the same poor home and live the same poor life. I think there’s something beautiful about that.”
Anna Dougherty writes for OSV News from Texas.
Catholic journalism is needed now more than ever. Please consider supporting this work by signing up for a SUBSCRIPTION (click HERE) or making a DONATION to The Monitor (click HERE). Thank you for your contribution.