The priest rose from humble beginnings on a central Illinois farm to commanding the airwaves of national radio broadcasts and primetime television shows that enthralled millions — including one little boy in the same state who would become pope.
Catholic Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen’s Emmy Award-winning 1950s program “Life Is Worth Living” offered a unique blend of scripture, catechism and humor on a secular network, drawing spectators of all faiths and backgrounds.
Donning an iconic pectoral cross and ferraiolo, the American prelate lectured from a simple chalk board, often tackling some of the common challenges of daily life: Anxiety. Love. Charity. Suffering. Loss and grief.
His pioneering televangelism continued to garner massive audiences in the 1960s with a similar series, the syndicated TV show “The Fulton Sheen Program.” He authored more than five dozen books, including “Peace of Soul,” which ranked sixth on the New York Times bestseller list.
Sheen later this month will make history as the first Illinois native to be beatified, the last major step before sainthood in the Catholic Church.
Tens of thousands of worshippers are expected to gather for his beatification Mass on Sept. 24 in St. Louis at the Dome at America’s Center, where the renowned evangelist will be designated as “Blessed Fulton Sheen.”
Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV noted during a June address that he had been moved by Sheen’s words as a child, calling the famed broadcaster “a light of faith, hope and love that shone through the radio and television media for decades.”
“I myself am a witness of his evangelization when I was growing up,” the pontiff said during a Vatican audience with the Pontifical Mission Societies. “His broadcasts touched millions with the hope of the Gospel.”
The Vatican gave the green light for Sheen’s beatification in February, after years of delays during an often turbulent canonization process.
A beatification ceremony was originally scheduled in 2019. But in an unusual move, the event was postponed by the Vatican amid legal investigation of clergy accused of sexual abuse throughout the state of New York. Although no accusations of abuse were made against Sheen personally, a bishop in Rochester, New York, raised concerns that further examination was needed to determine if Sheen had mishandled allegations of abuse or misconduct during his service as bishop there in the late 1960s.
Church officials later decided Sheen’s record wasn’t a cause for further postponement, and the Vatican earlier this year approved resuming plans for the beatification ceremony.
Catholic faithful around the world continued to be influenced by Sheen’s message for years after his 1979 death, spurring calls for his canonization.
Then a miracle — the healing of a Peoria-area baby reportedly born unresponsive and without a pulse for 61 minutes — was attributed to Sheen’s intercession and recognized by Pope Francis in 2019, fulfilling a requirement for the path to sainthood.
The infant’s mother, Bonnie Engstrom of Washington, Illinois, said she had invoked Sheen’s prayers during that fateful hour. She and her family plan to attend the upcoming beatification in St. Louis.
The baby — James Fulton Engstrom, who is now a teenager — will present a relic of Sheen during the ceremony.
“All of Illinois can be proud that one of our own is going to be raised to the level of blessed,” Bonnie Engstrom said during a recent interview with the Tribune.
Numerous services and events leading up to the beatification Mass will also be held in Peoria, where Sheen was ordained a priest on Sept. 20, 1919, at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception; there will be a special Mass there commemorating the anniversary of that ordination this Sunday.
“There’s just going to be a tremendous grace poured upon the church in this moment,” said Diocese of Peoria Bishop Louis Tylka during a virtual pre-beatification kickoff celebration in late August. “Seeing so many people excited … my hope is that it’s a moment of inspiration.”
As Sheen’s historic beatification approaches, here are 10 noteworthy facts about his life, ministry and legacy:
1. His religious TV shows competed — and even beat out — major stars of the day. Airing in black and white, the weekly episodes of “A Life Worth Living” vied for viewership with “The Frank Sinatra Show” and comedian Milton Berle, dubbed “Mr. Television,” who famously quipped, “At least I’m losing my ratings to God.”
Sheen won the 1953 Emmy for Most Outstanding Television Personality over actor Lucille Ball, broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, comedian Jimmy Durante and former Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson, who had just lost the presidency to Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The clergyman had credited the achievement to his TV show’s four writers: Gospel authors Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
“(Sheen) was a really important figure in American media in the 20th century, first in radio and then in television,” said Kathleen Sprows Cummings, professor of history at the University of Notre Dame and author of the book “A Saint of Our Own: How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American.” “He helped Catholicism become more understood and accepted by becoming a celebrity on his TV shows.”
2. He was born on a farm in the small town of El Paso, Illinois, on May 8, 1895.
Yet Sheen was never much good at farmwork, preferring reading to shucking corn, cleaning horse stalls and baling hay. He recalled that a neighbor once told his dad he would never amount to much because, “He’s always got his nose in a book,” according to “Treasure in Clay: The Autobiography of Fulton J. Sheen.”
3. His original name was Peter John Sheen — and he was sometimes called P.J. as a boy. Yet he grew to prefer his mother’s maiden name, Fulton, “and used it until it stuck,” according to a 1952 Time Magazine article that featured Sheen on the cover.
4. A clumsy childhood faux pas turned into a formative prophecy. While serving as an altar boy during Mass at the cathedral in Peoria, a young Sheen accidentally dropped and shattered a wine cruet in the sanctuary.
He was terrified that presiding Bishop John L. Spalding would reprimand him.
“There is no atomic explosion that can equal in intensity of decibels the noise and explosive force of a wine cruet falling on the marble floor of a cathedral in the presence of a bishop,” Sheen recounted in “Treasure in Clay.”
Instead, the bishop comforted the young boy and offered two predictions: that Sheen would one day study at the University of Louvain in Belgium and that he would go on to become a bishop, saying, “Someday you will be just as I am,” according to the autobiography.
Both predictions came true.
5. He was an ardent anti-communist. Sheen professed a particular spiritual closeness with Christians oppressed in Eastern Bloc countries during the height of the Cold War.
He was given special biritual faculties by the pope allowing him to celebrate the liturgy in the Byzantine Rite, to help show solidarity with the many Byzantine Rite Catholics who lived in parts of Eastern Europe under communist rule.
“He wanted to connect with the Byzantine Catholic Church in order to be close to people in Eastern Europe who were being persecuted,” the Archbishop Fulton Sheen Museum in Peoria said on its Facebook page.
In 1955, Sheen celebrated a large outdoor Byzantine Divine Liturgy in Pennsylvania and arranged for it to be broadcast in countries behind the Iron Curtain via Voice of America and Radio Free Europe.
“We are praying for your freedom!” Sheen declared during the homily.
6. He’s often credited with predicting the demise of communist dictator Joseph Stalin on-air.
In an uncanny February 1953 episode titled “The Death of Stalin,” Sheen read the monologue from the burial scene of “Julius Caesar” by Shakespeare but subbed the Roman characters with the names of major Soviet leaders; the role of star-crossed Caesar was assigned to Stalin.
“Stalin must one day meet his judgment,” Sheen declared, his eyes piercing the camera.
Stalin suffered a stroke roughly a week later. On March 5, 1953, he was dead.
7. Sheen oversaw the raising of millions of dollars for global Catholic missions, according to The Pontifical Mission Societies USA.
His niece, the late Joan Sheen Cunningham of Peoria, recalled that Sheen also donated his earnings from his television shows, according to her book “My Uncle Fulton Sheen.”
“Though he was contracted for $26,000 an episode, Bishop Sheen never saw the money. It went straight to Rome to be distributed to missionaries throughout the world,” she wrote. “Bishop Sheen derived great satisfaction knowing that his salary provided a regular means of support for the missions and that he had earned the money in such a positive manner — the edification of his viewers.”
8. He devoted one continuous hour to prayer each day, called his “holy hour.”
“Over time he came to rely on the Holy Hour, craving its benefits and seeing his time spent before the Eucharist as akin to breathing with the help of an oxygen tank,” Cunningham recalled in her book.
On Dec. 9, 1979, at the age of 84, Sheen died at his home chapel in Manhattan, New York, while praying during this “holy hour” period.
9. His canonization process has been tumultuous, including a lengthy — and highly publicized — court battle over his final resting place.
This ended in 2019 when his remains were moved from New York and interred in a tomb at the cathedral in the Diocese of Peoria, which had opened Sheen’s cause for canonization in 2002.
“Battles over saints’ bodies are ubiquitous in the Catholic church,” Cummings noted. “But they don’t usually play out on the front page of the New York Times.”
10. A second miracle will likely have to be attributed to Sheen’s intercession by the Catholic Church before he can become a saint.
Once someone is beatified, another miracle is typically needed before the candidate is canonized, though popes in the past have sometimes waived that step in special circumstances.
“We will pray for one more miracle to be verified through his intercession and then, God willing, he will be declared a saint,” Tylka said during the August pre-beatification event. “I like to say he is already a saint — we’re just trying to catch up.”