Fulton Sheen’s Beatification Tests How The Catholic Church Weighs Holiness
The beatification on Thursday of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen is more than a celebration of a revered Catholic figure. It is also the culmination of a years-long effort to reconcile Sheen’s extraordinary public influence with a series of controversies that delayed his path closer to sainthood.
For Catholics living in central Illinois, the ceremony represents the fulfillment of a deeply personal campaign. For the Catholic Church as a whole, Sheen’s beatification offers a moment to examine how the church evaluates holiness in figures whose lives intersected with mass media, politics and institutional authority.
“May the example and the intercession of [Archbishop Fulton Sheen], known for his evangelizing work to the media, inspire many others likewise to find new ways of spreading the gospel message with joyful enthusiasm,” Pope Leo said in English on Wednesday.
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At the center of the Sheen story is Bonnie Engstrom’s son James. Born in 2010 without a pulse, the child was resuscitated after a prolonged emergency. Engstrom and others prayed for Sheen’s intercession. The archbishop had died in 1979. The Vatican ultimately determined the baby’s recovery constituted a miracle attributable to Sheen.
The finding was consequential because recognition of a miracle is a major step in the Catholic process toward beatification. For Catholics, the episode provides a tangible connection between Sheen’s life and his continuing spiritual influence.
It also illustrates how the church’s sainthood process operates: An extraordinary event becomes part of a formal investigation into whether a deceased Catholic’s intercession can be credited with a miraculous outcome. A second confirmed miracle would support Sheen’s cause for sainthood.
“We will all be at the beatification, and we’re super excited,” Engstrom, of nearby Washington, Ill., told The Associated Press.
Her son — now a healthy teenager — is expected to carry a relic of Sheen at the beatification ceremony.
TV host before the age of celebrity pastors
Sheen’s significance extends well beyond the miracle attributed to his intercession. Born in Illinois in 1895, he became one of the most recognizable Catholic figures in the United States during the middle part of the 20th century. His influence was built not simply through ecclesiastical office, but through his mastery of emerging mass media at the time.
His radio and later television program, “Life Is Worth Living,” brought a Catholic bishop into millions of American homes during the 1950s. Sheen combined religious teaching with accessible storytelling and a cultivated television persona, appearing in clerical dress before a chalkboard.
In that respect, Sheen anticipated a form of religious broadcasting that would become far more prominent in subsequent decades. He demonstrated that TV could serve not only as a way of transmitting church services, but as a vehicle for a charismatic religious personality.
Fulton’s legacy helps explain why his beatification has significance beyond his hometown of Peoria, Ill. Sheen represents an earlier model of American religious communication, one in which intellectual authority, theatrical presentation and mass media could easily coexist.
Sheen’s beliefs part of his public persona
Sheen was not simply a television personality. He was an influential public intellectual whose views were shaped by the geopolitical conflicts of his era.
He strongly opposed communism, reflecting the Catholic Church’s broader confrontation with communist regimes during the Cold War. At the same time, his opposition to the Vietnam War complicated any simple effort to place him within a contemporary political category.
That history matters because Sheen’s influence on the American public cannot be separated entirely from the political and ideological environment in which he operated. His preaching addressed questions of morality, social responsibility and international affairs alongside explicitly Catholic themes.
His career illustrates an earlier model of American Catholic public life, when prominent churchmen could occupy substantial space in national debates without fitting neatly into today's political categories.
But the most consequential complication in Sheen’s road to beatification was not theological. It involved the Catholic Church’s handling of clergy sexual-abuse allegations.
A beatification ceremony had been scheduled for 2019, but the Vatican postponed it after the Diocese of Rochester requested additional time amid legal investigations concerning the handling of priests accused of sexual abuse in New York.
The episode highlights an important distinction in the Catholic canonization process: Declaring someone blessed is not simply an assessment of personal popularity or historical importance. It involved scrutiny of the candidate's life, reputation and record, and the church has had to conduct that process in an institutional environment transformed by decades of revelations about clergy abuse and church oversight.
Church officials subsequently determined that Sheen’s record did not warrant further delay, clearing the way for the beatification to proceed.
That resolution does not erase the broader institutional questions surrounding the period in which Sheen served as a bishop. Instead, it demonstrates how contemporary standards of accountability can affect the evaluation of figures whose careers unfolded under very different institutional circumstances.
Peoria’s connection to Sheen
The relocation of Sheen’s remains also strengthened the connection between the archbishop and the Illinois community that considers him one of its own.
Sheen was born in El Paso, Ill., but raised in Peoria. Although his ecclesiastical career eventually took him far beyond Illinois, his body remained in New York City for decades after his death. A 2019 court battle ultimately resulted in his remains being moved to Peoria’s Cathedral of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception.
Moving Sheen’s remains transformed the city into a destination for pilgrims. The physical proximity to a prospective saint can acquire significance within Catholic devotional culture.
The scale of Sheen’s beatification ceremony underscores that local attachment. Peoria itself cannot accommodate the expected crowds, prompting the main Mass to be held in St. Louis (where 50,000 people are expected to show up), while smaller commemorations will take place in his hometown.
Clemente Lisi serves as executive editor at Religion Unplugged.