Women Made New!

Reflections on Adversity, Transformation and Healing. Compiled by Crystalina Evert.

This powerful book features the captivating stories of twelve women who overcame personal trials and societal deceptions to become champions for the Kingdom of God.

Women Made New Contributors

Mother Angelica

Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation was born Rita Antoinette Rizzo on April 20, 1923, in Canton, Ohio. After a difficult childhood, a healing of her recurring stomach ailment led the young Rita on a process of discernment that ended in the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration in Cleveland. Thirteen years later, in 1956, Sister Angelica promised the Lord as she awaited spinal surgery that, if He would permit her to walk again, she would build Him a monastery in the South. In Irondale, Alabama, Mother Angelica’s vision took form. Her distinctive approach to teaching the Faith led to parish talks, then pamphlets and books, then radio and television opportunities. By 1980 the Sisters had converted a garage at the monastery into a rudimentary television studio. EWTN was born. Mother Angelica has been a constant presence on television in the United States and around the world for more than forty years. Innumerable conversions to the Catholic Faith have been attributed to her unique gift for presenting the gospel: joyful but resolute, calming but bracing. Mother Angelica spent the last years of her life cloistered in the second monastery she founded: Our Lady of the Angels in Hanceville, Alabama, where she and her Nuns dedicated themselves to prayer and adoration of Our Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament.

Lisa Cotter

Lisa Cotter is a leading Catholic speaker and author known for her practical insights on relationships, femininity, and living life with excellence. She is the author of Reveal the Gift: Living the Feminine Genius and Dating Detox: 40 Days of Perfecting Love in an Imperfect World. She and her husband, Kevin, served FOCUS as a missionary family for more than ten years and are the cohosts of the popular How-to Catholic podcast. Lisa holds a degree in theology from Benedictine College and is finishing her master’s degree in theology at Augustine Institute. She resides in Denver with her husband and their four children.

Learn more here: MadeToMagnify.com

Cameron Fradd

Cameron Fradd is the founder of Among the Lilies, a podcast for woman “who are tired of pretending and ready to be real!” She speaks weekly to a growing community of women about being authentic and real. She speaks passionately about “the feminine genius” and believes that all women are beautiful and are wonderfully made. Cameron has an unshakable faith in our Lord and a deep desire to share her heart with others, especially women. Through her podcast, social media, and her speaking engagements, she is passionate about helping women discover their identity as beloved daughters of God. She spends most of her time raising and homeschooling her four beautiful, energetic children in Ohio, where she lives with her husband, Matt Fradd, with whom she coauthored the book Restored: True Stories of Love and Lust After Porn. With a smile always on her face and praise on her lips, Cameron presses onward one day at a time, uttering the words of her patron saint, Joan of Arc: “It was for this that I was born!”

Learn more here: CameronFradd.com

Catherine Hadro

Catherine Hadro is the founding host of EWTN Pro-Life Weekly, a global television show dedicated to the pro-life cause from a Catholic perspective. She now serves the network as an EWTN News contributor and is a national Catholic speaker and writer. Throughout her career as a broadcast professional, Catherine has regularly interviewed top politicians, Church leaders, and cultural figures. Her reporting has caught the attention of outlets including Vanity Fair and New York Magazine. Her writings have appeared in the National Catholic Register, the Washington Examiner, and America magazine. Catherine is a graduate of Florida State University and resides in Virginia with her husband.

Learn more here: CatherineHadro.com

Sr. Bethany Madonna, S.V.

Sr. Bethany Madonna, S.V., was raised in Melbourne, Florida. While attending the University of Central Florida, she had a pro- found encounter with the Lord, and this drew her heart toward the vulnerable unborn and their mothers. After her graduation in 2006, she worked for the Respect Life Office of the Diocese of Orlando before joining the Sisters of Life in 2007. Sr. Bethany made her final vows in 2015 and serves as the local superior and mission vulnerable pregnant women and also have a ministry of presence and evangelization on Arizona State University’s Tempe campus. She is passionate about sharing the message of life and love.

About the ministry of the Sisters of Life

The Sisters of Life are a Catholic religious community of women founded in 1991 by John Cardinal O’Connor. Consecrated completely to Jesus, the Lord of Life, they commit themselves to the protection of human life and to thepromotion of new life in Christ, acknowledging the sacredness of every person and sharing the good news of God’s abundant mercy. In this way, they seek to help reveal to individuals their own innate goodness, the particular love God has for them, and the call to a life of abundant truth, joy, and hope. The Sisters are immersed in Eucharistic prayer within a vibrant community life, and their missions include caring for vulnerable pregnant women and their unborn children; inviting those wounded by abortion into the healing mercy of Jesus; fostering a culture of life through evangelization; retreat works; spiritual accompaniment of college students; and upholding the beauty of marriage and family life.

Learn more here: SistersOfLife.org

Leila Miller

Leila Miller is a revert to Catholicism who has taught and written extensively on the Catholic Faith for the past twenty-five years. Her books include Primal Loss: The Now-Adult Children of Divorce Speak; Made This Way: How to Prepare Kids to Face Today’s Tough Moral Is- sues (cowritten by Trent Horn of Catholic Answers); Raising Chaste Catholic Men; and Impossible Marriages Redeemed: They Didn’t End the Story in the Middle. Leila’s first blog, the popular Little Catholic Bubble, ran for eight years, and her current blog can be found at LeilaMiller.net. Leila and her husband, Dean, have eight children, ages thirty to twelve, and many grandchildren. They live in Phoenix, Arizona. Leila has a passion for teaching the truths of our Faith with clarity and simplicity, and in recent years she has focused on examining and exposing the devastating effects of divorce on children and abandoned spouses. Because most Catholics are against divorce in theory but not in practice, the damage of divorce is rarely discussed and almost always discounted. Through her work, Leila gives the victims of divorce a voice they have been denied while reintroducing poorly catechized Catholics to the teachings of Christ and His Church on the foundational topics of marriage and divorce.

Learn more here: LeilaMiller.net

Joy Pinto

Joy Pinto is the executive director of Her Choice Birmingham Women’s Center. She and her husband, Jim, have been married for forty-four years and have four children and seventeen grand- children. Joy cohosts At Home with Jim and Joy, a weekly show on EWTN dealing with life, marriage, and family. Since 2009, Joy has been the director of a pregnancy help clinic in downtown Birmingham, encouraging women facing unplanned pregnancies to choose life and supporting them in that decision.

Learn more here: HerChoiceBirmingham.org

Dr. Kymberly Scipione

Dr. Kymberly Scipione is a mother of five and has been married to her husband, John, since 1998. They live in Aurora, Colorado. Kymberly completed two doctoral degrees and three master’s degrees while being married and raising a family. She is a counselor and therapist trained in highly effective models of healing, and her private practice primarily focuses on women and trauma. She holds licenses in Colorado, Wyoming, and California.

Learn more here: DrScipione.com

Sarah Swafford

Sarah Swafford is the founder of Emotional Virtue Ministries. She speaks internationally to people of all ages on a variety of topics, including emotional virtue, dating and relationships, modesty of intentions, and interior confidence. She is a graduate of Benedictine College and has been involved in ministry for more ten years. For three years, Sarah worked as a residence hall director at Benedictine College, taking care of 142 freshmen women. That amazing experience gave her a front-row seat to observe the hearts of women and men transitioning from high school to college and gave her unique insights into the struggles facing teens and young adults today. Sarah shares her message at school assemblies, retreats, rallies, and conferences around the world. She is the author of Emotional Virtue: A Guide to Drama-Free Relationships. She has appeared on EWTN and is the cohost of EWTN’s At the Heart of Relationships. Sarah is a contributor to Chosen, Ascension Press’ Confirmation program, YDisciple’s True Beauty, and Dynamic Catholic’s marriage prep program, Better Together. She is a proud team member of the Chastity Project and speaks at FOCUS and Steubenville Conferences in the United States and Canada. She also works on Special Projects for Catholic Identity at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, where she resides with her wonderful husband, Dr. Andrew Swafford, and their children: Thomas, Fulton, Cate, Kolbe, and John Paul.

Learn more here: TheSwaffords.com

Teresa Tomeo

Teresa Tomeo is an author, syndicated Catholic talk-show host, and motivational speaker with more than thirty years of experience in TV, radio, and newspapers; for twenty of those years, she was a secular reporter and anchor in the Detroit market. In the year 2000, Teresa left the secular media to start her own speaking and communications company, Teresa Tomeo Communications, LLC. Her weekday morning radio program, Catholic Connection, is coproduced by Ave Maria Radio in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the EWTN Global Catholic Radio Network. It is heard on more than five hundred Catholic radio stations worldwide and on the Sirius Satellite Network. Teresa appears frequently on the EWTN Global Catholic Television Network and cohosts the EWTN television series The Catholic View for Women. She is also a correspondent for EWTN News In Depth. As a deacon’s wife, Teresa writes a column for Our Sunday Visitor’s The Deacon magazine. In 2019, she opened her own Italy travel consultation company, T’s Italy (TravelItalyExpert. com). Teresa has written more than ten books and is an international speaker, addressing media awareness and activism as well as sharing about her reversion to the Catholic Church. She resides in Southeast Michigan with her husband, Deacon Dominick Pastore. They travel the world giving marriage and diaconate couples’ retreats.

Learn more here: TeresaTomeo.com

Johnette B. Williams

Johnnette B. Williams is the founder and president of Living His Life Abundantly® and Women of Grace®, a Catholic apostolate to women, whose mission is to transform the world, one woman at a time, through a program of spiritual formation. She is host of the international EWTN weekday television and syndicated radio programs Women of Grace and Women of Grace Live. A sought-after speaker, Johnnette presents on a variety of topics in various settings and geographic locations. She is also founder and president of the Benedicta Institute for Women®, whose mission is to identify, educate, develop, and train Catholic women to be active leaders and mentors in accord with their state in life. A mother and grandmother, Johnnette was married for thirty-three years until the death of her first husband. She married Jack Williams, general manager of EWTN Radio, in 2018. She is the author of several books and has developed study programs for women and teenage girls.

Learn more here: WomenOfGrace.com

Fr. Joseph Mary Wolfe, M.F.V.A.

Fr. Joseph Mary Wolfe is the chaplain of the Eternal Word Television Network, where he initially came to work in 1985 as an engineer. Two years later, he became one of the founding members of the men’s community that Mother Angelica founded in 1987: the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word. The motto of his religious order is: The lost I will seek out, the strayed I will bring back. The friars do this by utilizing modern means of communication to reach millions of souls throughout the world. Fr. Joseph was ordained to the priesthood in 1993 and often celebrates the daily televised Mass. He has produced a number of series featured on EWTN, including Faith in the Heartland, on the faith of farmers in his home state of Iowa; The Church Universal, on lay movements in the Church; and series on Fatima, Lourdes, and the Holy Land as well as a number of the prayers and devotions that regularly air on EWTN.

Learn more here: EWTN.com

meet the author

Hi there! I'm Crystalina.

Crystalina Evert is the founder of Women Made New! and co-founder of the Chastity Project. She is a best-selling author of Pure Womanhood, How to Find Your Soulmate without Losing Your Soul, and the curriculum YOU: Life, Love, and the Theology of the Body.

Crystalina has spoken internationally to more than one million people about the virtue of chastity, healing, and God’s plan for human sexuality. She has a weekly syndicated radio show on EWTN and has made television appearances on MSNBC and the BBC network. Crystalina has hosted several television series for teens and women on EWTN.

She and her husband, Jason, have spoken at World Youth Day in Sydney, Madrid, and Poland. Crystalina and her husband have been blessed with eight children.