By Andrew Winter
1. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, giant of 20th century television and archbishop of Rochester, N.Y., will be beatified Sept. 24 in St. Louis, by Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle.
2. Sheen was born in El Paso, Ill., in 1895, and was ordained a priest for the diocese of Peoria, Ill., in 1919. In 1951, he was consecrated an auxiliary bishop of New York, and from 1966 to 1969 was bishop of Rochester. Upon his death in 1979, he had given the Church 60 years of untiring service, 66 books, and hundreds of hours of radio and TV content.
3. Sheen began his famous career as a radio and TV speaker when The Catholic Hour radio show asked him to speak as a substitute for two weeks. His talks were so popular that The Catholic Hour kept him on for 20 years. At the end of that time, he was named director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in America.
4. A professor at The Catholic University of America (CUA) for 23 years, Sheen gave all of himself to the service of the Church as a teacher. While managing a full-time professorship, Sheen found time to appear on the radio, travel the country giving lectures, and write. In 23 years at CUA, he wrote 34 books. But through it all he always gave time to God, prioritizing his holy hour before the Eucharist every day. He never missed a day in 60 years.
5. In 1951, Sheen started a TV program called Life is Worth Living, which would become the most popular religious TV program in history. Even though his show appeared at the same time on Tuesday as Milton Berle’s Texaco Star Theatre, Sheen’s show reached an audience of approximately 30 million viewers a week. For his work preaching on this show, Sheen won an Emmy Award for “Most Outstanding Television Personality.”
6. Sheen attended every session of Vatican II, and during his time in Rome became good friends with Father Joseph Ratzinger, later to become Benedict XVI. Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul II both spoke highly of Sheen. Two months before Sheen died, John Paul II embraced him in Rome and told him: “You have written and spoken well of the Lord Jesus. You are a loyal son of the Church!”
7. Twenty-three years after his death in 1979, the Diocese of Peoria opened Sheen’s cause for canonization. He was named a venerable by Benedict XVI in 2012.
8. James Fulton Engstrom experienced the miracle required for Sheen’s beatification in 2010. James was stillborn Sept. 16, 2010, and after 61 minutes of failed resuscitation attempts, the doctors were on the verge of announcing the time of death. But then suddenly, as his mother Bonnie continuously prayed for Archbishop Sheen’s intercession, the baby came back to life. After extensive investigation, Pope Francis approved the miracle in 2014.
9. But Sheen’s beatification, originally scheduled for 2019, was delayed when a controversy arose over Sheen’s remains. In his will, Sheen asked to be buried in New York, but after an extensive court case, his niece Joan Sheen Cunningham brought his body back to Peoria. It was further delayed when several bishops of the USCCB requested further investigation into Sheen’s actions during his tenure as bishop of Rochester. After these problems were resolved, Pope Leo XIV announced his upcoming beatification in 2026.
