Fulton John Sheen, born Peter John Sheen on May 8, 1895, in El Paso, Illinois, was ordained a Roman Catholic priest on September 20, 1919, and spent the 1920s and 1930s establishing himself as a formidable academic theologian and preacher before radio made him a national figure. The Catholic Hour, which he anchored on NBC radio from 1930 to 1950, reached listeners of every denomination with a style built on clarity rather than sectarian appeal.
Television posed a harder test than radio: a Catholic bishop, alone at a chalkboard, competing for a Tuesday night audience against Milton Berle's entertainment program on a rival network. Life Is Worth Living, which ran on the DuMont Television Network from 1952 to 1957, met the challenge and then some, airing on 169 stations and drawing as many as 10,000,000 viewers a week. In 1952 the show won Sheen an Emmy Award for Most Outstanding Television Personality, a category he shared that year with entertainers rather than fellow clergy, and one no religious broadcaster had won before him.
Sheen was consecrated a bishop on June 11, 1951, in Rome, and later served as Bishop of Rochester, New York, from 1966 to 1969. He wrote more than 70 books over his career and continued broadcasting into the 1960s with The Fulton Sheen Program. He died in New York City on December 9, 1979.