Last week Pope Benedict XVI assented to some of the legwork done by Cardinal Angelo Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, in preparing figures for the canonization process. The most interesting name on the list to these shores is Fulton J. Sheen, who was given the title “venerable,” and will eventually be beatified if a miracle due to his intercession is recognized.
The process was started in 2002 in Sheen’s native Peoria, Ill. (where it played well!) and the diocese’s Bishop Daniel Jenky personally presented the pope with letters from around the world supporting his candidacy and the official positio, a document examining the life and holiness of the famous preacher and television personality.
Sheen is a fascinating figure in the history of evangelization, and one whose work continues to endure — I still reference relevant segments of his program “Life is Worth Living” through YouTube clips in my classes to bewildered students who can’t imagine mass media before Twilight or True Blood, (although according to them Sheen’s ecclesiastical cape is itself sort of vampire-esque).
In addition to the wildly popular and Emmy award-winning television show, Sheen was a popular radio host, writer, editor, fundraiser and scholar holding a doctorate from the prestigious school of theology in Louvain, Belgium. He was zealous in his criticisms of Nazism and communism, and immersed in the classic apologetical tracts of Christian history, bringing them to bear on contemporary events of his day.
After serving as auxiliary bishop of New York and later bishop of Rochester, he was made titular archbishop of Newport, Wales in 1969. Sheen is buried in the crypt of St. Patrick’s in New York, where his earthly remains are never physically far from the Blessed Sacrament, the love of Sheen’s life. By his own accounts, he spent at least an hour a day praying before the tabernacle. He drew strength from his prayer life to become one of history’s great missionaries, without ever having to leave the studio.
He said once, “Little did I know in those days that it would be given to me through radio and television to address a greater audience in a half hour than Paul in all the years of his missionary life.”
Michael M. Canaris is an administrator at Fairfield University’s Center for Faith and Public Life and is on the faculty for the Department of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University.
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