Fulton J. Sheen

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.

The Diocese of Peoria opened Fulton Sheen's cause for canonization in 2002, and Pope Benedict XVI declared him Venerable, recognizing heroic virtue, on June 28, 2012. A miracle attributed to his intercession, the unexplained recovery in 2010 of a stillborn infant, James Fulton Engstrom, who was without a pulse for 61 minutes before reviving, was formally approved on July 5, 2019.

Beatification, the next formal step toward sainthood, was originally scheduled for December 21, 2019, in Peoria, but was postponed at the Vatican's direction amid a jurisdictional dispute between the Diocese of Peoria, which had advanced the cause, and the Archdiocese of New York, where Sheen had served and where his remains were then held. The dispute centered on which diocese held authority over the cause and over Sheen's remains, a question with no doctrinal content but real procedural weight in canon law. It has since been resolved, and Sheen's beatification is now scheduled for September 24, 2026, in St. Louis, presided over by Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle.

Canonization itself, the final step, has not been scheduled and requires the Vatican's approval of a second miracle attributed to Sheen's intercession beyond the one already confirmed. His case remains one of the most closely watched active causes among twentieth century American Catholics, made unusual by the sheer size of the broadcast audience whose devotion first brought his name to Rome's attention.