OSV News
With the Feb. 9 announcement of Venerable Fulton J. Sheen’s beatification, experts told OSV News the renowned 20th-century theologian and evangelizer spoke not only to his time, but to the present — with a clear, hopeful and accessible message firmly centered on Christ’s saving love for humanity.
“I think he has a lot to say to us in this moment,” Bishop Louis Tylka of Peoria, Illinois — where Archbishop Sheen is entombed, and home to his cause for canonization — told OSV News. “I’m always amazed as I encounter clips of things he said or things that he wrote, how pertinent it is to the world today.”
Archbishop Sheen — a prolific author, ardent evangelizer and pioneering religious broadcaster — “was a voice of reason,” said Bishop Tylka. “He was a voice of truth.”
“He was very direct,” said Richard Howick, director of the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Excellence in Preaching Initiative at The Catholic University of America, which provides homiletics training and resources for priests, deacons and lay leaders. “He had no problem talking point blank about some of the most important issues of our day.”
Those topics included scathing critiques of communism and Marxism, the dangers of secularism, the disintegration of the family, and the modern pivot from a Judeo-Christian understanding of human nature.
Yet, said Howick, the late archbishop “was always positive.
“Almost every single time he opened his mouth to begin a subject, he would start with a story or a joke or something light, in order to remind everyone that the conversation is about the positive.”
And that positive focus, in turn, pointed to the Gospel message, said Bishop Tylka.
“He (Archbishop Sheen) was a voice that promoted human dignity and respect for others,” said the bishop. “He called us to be a people who show compassion and care for those who are most vulnerable in our world.”
Influential evangelist
Once dubbed “God’s microphone,” Archbishop Sheen is remembered as one of the most influential and innovative evangelists in American history.
Archbishop Sheen was ordained for the Diocese of Peoria in 1919, and his remains are now enshrined in its Cathedral of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception after previously being entombed in New York City.
His beatification was given a green light originally in 2019, but just two weeks before the scheduled ceremony, the Holy See paused the process, apparently to ensure that Archbishop Sheen was free of allegations of mishandling clergy sex abuse cases between 1966-69 when he was bishop of the Diocese of Rochester, New York.
After the diocese’s nearly six-year bankruptcy case concluded in September with a $256.35 million settlement for survivors of clergy abuse, Msgr. Jason Gray, a priest and official in the Diocese of Peoria and the executive director of the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Foundation, told OSV News that no allegations against the archbishop were raised in the process.
In New York, where Archbishop Sheen served as an auxiliary bishop and lived for much of his life until his death at 84 in 1979, Archbishop Ronald A. Hicks said the Archdiocese of New York was rejoicing with the whole church at the announcement.
“Although justly famous as a groundbreaking pioneer in using radio and television as a means of evangelizing and teaching, Archbishop Sheen’s entire life was devoted to making disciples and spreading the good news of the Gospel,” he said in a statement published by The Good Newsroom, the archdiocese’s news outlet.
‘Person-to-person’ person
Archbishop Sheen was known for his ability to rally support for those in need, raising millions during his 1950-1966 tenure as national director of the Society of the Propagation of the Faith, one of the four Pontifical Mission Societies — and for his tremendous personal generosity, said Cheryl C.D. Hughes, author of the 2024 book “Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Convert Maker.”
“He gave away his coat twice,” Hughes told OSV News. “On a cold New York day, he saw somebody shivering and said, ‘Here, take my coat.’”
Hughes added that while Archbishop Sheen, who was “being paid several thousands of dollars a night” in speaker fees, “could have luxuriated in all of his earnings,” he instead “gave it away” — including to the now-closed St. Martin de Porres Hospital in Mobile, Alabama, which served Black women amid segregation.
“He was a ‘person-to-person’ person,” said Hughes. “He was very intuitive when it came to individuals, about what they needed, what would be the best thing for them, the best tactic for opening the door to them. He had empathy for the human condition. Everyone to him was a child of God, and they were his brothers and his sisters.”
Whether writing one of his 66 books, evangelizing to millions, caring for individuals or rallying support for the missions, Archbishop Sheen drew on a profound and personal relationship with Christ, said Msgr. Gray.
“I think that people would fail to really understand Sheen unless they knew that this was coming out of a deep, personal spiritual life,” which made the archbishop’s work “effective,” he told OSV News.
Msgr. Gray pointed to Archbishop Sheen’s “time in front of the Blessed Sacrament, his daily holy hour,” and “his intimate devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.”
That time translated into a compelling witness for the faith, one that transcended the media platforms he used to disseminate the Gospel.
“Oftentimes integrity is in such short supply,” he said. “Because people are searching for meaning, there’s something really powerful about someone who is so confident in what he’s saying. When he speaks about the gift of eternal life, he is doing so with such conviction. And I think young people respond to that.”
Above: Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, seen in an undated photo, is remembered as one of the most influential and innovative evangelists in U.S. history. (File / OSV News)