Blessed Fulton Sheen

Who was Blessed Fulton Sheen?

Fulton J. Sheen was a Catholic priest and bishop from central Illinois who became one of the best-known religious voices in American history. For twenty-two years he preached on national radio, and in the 1950s his half-hour television talks, given with nothing but a blackboard and a piece of chalk, drew as many as 30 million viewers a week. He won an Emmy, appeared on the cover of Time, raised millions of dollars for the Church's missions, and wrote more than fifty books.

He is a Blessed, not yet a saint. On September 24, 2026, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, acting for Pope Leo XIV, declared him Blessed at a Mass in St. Louis attended by about 50,000 people. The Diocese of Peoria says he is the first American-born bishop to be beatified. His feast day is December 9.

The road there was long. His cause opened in 2002. It stalled for five years over a fight between New York and Peoria about where his body belonged, and a beatification already scheduled for December 2019 was called off two weeks before the date. This entry covers his life, the approved miracle, the delays and the devotions connected with him.

The life of Fulton Sheen

A farm boy from El Paso, Illinois

He was born on May 8, 1895, in El Paso, Illinois, the oldest of the four sons of Newton and Delia Sheen. He was baptized Peter John, but as a small boy he came to be called by his mother's maiden name, Fulton, and it stuck. The Sheen Foundation says his mother dedicated him to the Virgin Mary after his baptism, and he renewed the dedication himself at his First Communion.

The family lived for a time on a farm and then moved to Peoria so Fulton could attend St. Mary's Cathedral School. He served Mass at the cathedral for Bishop John Lancaster Spalding, attended the Spalding Institute for high school, then St. Viator College in Bourbonnais, Illinois, and St. Paul Seminary in Minnesota.

Priest and scholar

He was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Peoria on September 20, 1919, in St. Mary's Cathedral, the same church where he is buried today. Further study took him to the Catholic University of America in Washington and to the University of Louvain in Belgium, with classes at the Sorbonne in Paris and the Angelicum in Rome. In 1923 Louvain gave him its doctorate in philosophy, and he became the first American to win the Cardinal Mercier Prize for International Philosophy.

Back home, he spent about nine months in 1925 as a curate at St. Patrick's, a poor parish in Peoria. His bishop then let him go to the Catholic University of America, where he taught theology and philosophy from 1926 until 1950.

The Catholic Hour

In 1930 he became the main speaker on The Catholic Hour, a Sunday-night national radio program on NBC. He stayed with it for more than twenty years, and the foundation puts his weekly audience at about four million listeners. He preached on sin and grace, on communism, on the family, on the suffering of the war years, in a warm, theatrical voice that made listeners feel addressed one by one.

Letters poured in, and so did converts. He gave private instruction to many people who later entered the Catholic Church, among them public figures such as the writer and diplomat Clare Boothe Luce and the former communist editor Louis Budenz.

Life Is Worth Living and the Emmy

He was made a bishop in 1951, consecrated in Rome on June 11 as an auxiliary bishop of New York. Early in 1952 the DuMont network gave him a prime-time slot on Tuesday nights at 8:00 for a program called Life Is Worth Living. (The foundation's timeline dates its start to the fall of 1951.) It went out live from a theater in New York, with no script and no cue cards. Sheen stood in his cassock and cape, walked to a blackboard, and talked for half an hour. He took no pay.

His competition was Milton Berle's Texaco Star Theater on NBC and Frank Sinatra's show on CBS. Within two months the number of stations carrying Sheen grew from three to fifteen, and the show received about 8,500 letters a week. In 1953 he won the Emmy Award for Most Outstanding Television Personality. In the version of the story repeated ever since, he thanked his "four writers," Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; the Sheen Foundation says he credited the Gospel writers for his success. The program ran until 1957, and a later series, The Fulton Sheen Program, followed from 1961 to 1968.

Sixteen years for the missions

In 1950 he became national director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, the Church's main fundraising agency for the missions, and he held the post for sixteen years, overseeing 129 diocesan directors. He raised millions of dollars for missionaries in Africa, Asia, Oceania and Latin America and traveled to see their work. Shortly before he died he said, according to Fides, the news agency of the Pontifical Mission Societies, "My greatest love has always been the missions of the Church."

In February 1951 he designed the World Mission Rosary, with each decade a different color for a part of the world: green for Africa, blue for the Pacific islands, white for Europe, red for the Americas and yellow for Asia. "We must pray, and not for ourselves, but for the world," he said when he introduced it.

His years at the Society also brought him into conflict with his superior in New York, Cardinal Francis Spellman, over money. In his foreword to the 2008 edition of Sheen's autobiography, the journalist Raymond Arroyo describes the dispute and the belief that Spellman pushed Sheen off television. Sheen himself never spoke about it publicly, and in Treasure in Clay he wrote warmly of the cardinal.

Bishop of Rochester

On October 21, 1966, Pope Paul VI named him bishop of Rochester, New York. He was 71. He held the post for just under three years, a time of experiments and controversy in the diocese, and resigned in 1969. Paul VI made him titular archbishop of Newport, in Wales. "I am not retiring, only retreading," Sheen said, and he kept preaching, writing and giving retreats.

His last years and death

On October 2, 1979, Pope John Paul II, visiting New York, embraced the frail archbishop in the sanctuary of St. Patrick's Cathedral and told him, as the foundation records it, "You have written and spoken well of the Lord Jesus. You are a loyal son of the Church!"

Two months later, on December 9, 1979, after a series of heart operations, Sheen died in the private chapel of his New York apartment, before the Blessed Sacrament. He was 84. He was buried in the crypt beneath the high altar of St. Patrick's Cathedral, where the archbishops of New York lie. His autobiography, Treasure in Clay, came out the following year.

The daily Holy Hour

Sheen's best-known spiritual practice was simple. On the day of his ordination in 1919, he promised to make a Holy Hour every day, an hour of prayer before the Eucharist, and the foundation says he kept that promise for the rest of his life, through the radio years, the television years and his travels. He spoke and wrote about it often and urged priests in particular to take it up.

For Catholics, the Eucharist is Christ truly present, so a Holy Hour means time spent with him. Many people who pray for Sheen's canonization keep the practice in his memory, and the Diocese of Peoria held a novena of Holy Hours before the beatification. That he died in his own chapel, before the tabernacle, is part of why his admirers see the Holy Hour as the center of his life.

The miracle of Blessed Fulton Sheen

James Fulton Engstrom (approved)

On September 16, 2010, Bonnie and Travis Engstrom of Washington, Illinois, a town near Peoria, had a planned home birth. Their son was born without a pulse and was considered stillborn. His parents began at once to pray for Sheen's intercession and asked others to join them while the baby was rushed to OSF HealthCare St. Francis Medical Center in Peoria.

Doctors worked on him for an hour. Just as they were preparing to declare him dead, his heart began to beat at a normal rate for a healthy newborn. He had been without a pulse for 61 minutes. Doctors warned that he would likely be blind and might never walk, talk or feed himself. He grew up healthy instead; at eight, a Catholic News Service report said, he liked chicken nuggets, Star Wars and riding his bicycle.

The Diocese of Peoria finished its inquiry into the case on December 11, 2011. On March 6, 2014, the medical experts of the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints concluded unanimously that the recovery had no scientific explanation, noting that the boy had survived with no cognitive or developmental deficit. The theologians voted unanimously on June 17, 2014, that it was due to Sheen's intercession. Pope Francis approved the miracle on July 6, 2019. It is an approved miracle.

"I really don't think it was given to us, for us," Bonnie Engstrom said in 2019. "I think it was given to the church, for the church." At the beatification Mass, James Fulton Engstrom carried forward a relic for veneration: a piece of Sheen's jawbone.

Other favors (reported)

The cause has also collected many accounts of healings and answered prayers. When the 2019 beatification was postponed, the Diocese of Peoria said "there continue to be many miracles reported through Sheen's intercession." None of these has been formally approved. A second approved miracle would be needed for canonization.

The long road to beatification

The cause opens

The Archbishop Fulton John Sheen Foundation, formed in 1998, asked New York's Cardinal John O'Connor and then Cardinal Edward Egan for permission to pursue the cause. With Egan's agreement, Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria opened it in 2002. Twenty-two volumes of testimony went to Rome in 2008, Pope Benedict XVI received the positio in 2011 and told Bishop Jenky he had known Sheen personally at the Second Vatican Council, and on June 28, 2012, Benedict declared him Venerable for his heroic virtue.

The fight over his body

By 2014 the miracle had passed both Vatican panels, and a beatification seemed close. Then it stopped. In September 2014 Bishop Jenky suspended the cause, saying the Holy See expected Sheen's remains to be in Peoria, the diocese promoting him. The Archdiocese of New York, which held the body in St. Patrick's crypt, declined to release it, citing Sheen's own wish to be buried in New York.

In 2016 Sheen's niece and closest living relative, Joan Sheen Cunningham, asked a New York court to let her move her uncle to Peoria. A Manhattan judge agreed. The archdiocese appealed, and an appeals court ordered a full hearing on Sheen's wishes, including a sworn statement from his longtime associate Msgr. Hilary Franco. After that hearing, in June 2018, the judge again ruled for Cunningham. On June 7, 2019, New York's highest court turned down the archdiocese's final appeal.

The transfer took place quickly. On June 27, 2019, Sheen's body arrived in Peoria and was placed in a new marble tomb in St. Mary's Cathedral, and his niece sprinkled it with holy water. Nine days later, on July 6, Pope Francis approved the miracle.

The 2019 postponement

The beatification was set for December 21, 2019, in Peoria. On December 3, the Diocese of Peoria announced that the Holy See had postponed it. Two days later the Diocese of Rochester confirmed that its bishop, Salvatore Matano, had asked for a delay. Rochester said it had raised concerns about going ahead without further review of Sheen's role in priests' assignments during his time as its bishop, at a moment when New York's attorney general was investigating how the state's dioceses had handled abuse.

Peoria answered firmly. Its officials said there had never been any allegation of abuse against Sheen himself, and that Sheen had never assigned the priest whose case was at issue to ministry; that was done later, under his successor. Bishop Jenky said he was "deeply saddened" and remained confident the beatification would happen.

Beatified in St. Louis

The pause lasted six years. On February 9, 2026, the Holy See told Bishop Louis Tylka of Peoria that the cause could proceed, and in March the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints set the date. The Mass moved to St. Louis because the largest venue in Peoria holds about 15,000 people, while the Dome at America's Center had held more than 100,000 for John Paul II's visit in 1999.

On September 24, 2026, Cardinal Tagle, the pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization, read Pope Leo XIV's apostolic letter in Latin, and Bishop Tylka repeated it in English. About 90 bishops, 1,000 priests, 1,600 religious and almost 250 deacons took part. A new official portrait showing Sheen with chalk in hand was unveiled. Tagle called him a "storyteller of Jesus."

Two weeks later, on October 5, Bishop Tylka presented a relic of the new Blessed to Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican. The Sheen Foundation reports that the pope, who like Sheen comes from Illinois, remembered watching him on television as a young man.

Is Fulton Sheen a patron saint?

Not formally. Patronages usually come by custom or by a decree after canonization, and Sheen has neither yet. Because of his work on radio and television, Catholics already speak of him as a model for broadcasters and for everyone who shares the faith through the media, and Pope Leo XIV, according to Bishop Tylka, has pointed to him as an example of finding new ways to spread the Gospel. On this site he appears under broadcasters and television on our patron saints page for that reason, with the caveat that the title is informal.

His other natural circles are the missions he served for sixteen years, which share the patronage of St. Francis Xavier and St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and his home diocese of Peoria. On his feast day in 2026 the diocese will unite the parishes of El Paso and Benson, Illinois, as Blessed Fulton Sheen Parish, the first in the world to bear his name. He was baptized in El Paso's St. Mary Church.

Symbols of Blessed Fulton Sheen in art

Sheen lived in the age of the camera, so he is known mostly from photographs and film rather than paintings. The images that have grown up around him draw on what millions saw on their screens:

• The cape: the long, flowing cape (a ferraiolo) he wore over his cassock on television, which he swept around his shoulders as he walked the set. Viewers who saw him as children still mention it.
• Chalk and a blackboard: his only prop on Life Is Worth Living. The official beatification portrait shows him holding chalk.
• The bishop's dress: a black cassock with red trim, a red zucchetto (skullcap) and a large pectoral cross on a chain, as in the 1952 and 1956 photographs on this page.
• JMJ: the letters for Jesus, Mary and Joseph, which head the plaque on his tomb and are worked into the railing at its entrance.
• The Blessed Sacrament: in devotional images, a tabernacle or monstrance recalls the daily Holy Hour.
• Mary: a statue of the Virgin and Child stood on his television set, a sign of his lifelong Marian devotion.

Because he is newly beatified, holy cards and statues of him are only now appearing. Look for a tall, thin bishop with deep-set eyes, often in the cape, sometimes with a piece of chalk.

Feast day and where Blessed Fulton Sheen is honored

His feast is December 9, the anniversary of his death, set in Pope Leo XIV's decree of beatification. As a Blessed, he is honored on the calendar of his diocese and of the Church in the United States rather than worldwide. The date is shared with St. Juan Diego, who saw Our Lady of Guadalupe for the first time on December 9, 1531. See more saints of the season on our feast days page.

The center of his cult is Peoria. His tomb is in a side chapel of the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception, 607 NE Madison Avenue, entered by the ramp at the front of the cathedral. The Sheen Foundation lists regular hours (at the time of writing, noon to 2 p.m. on weekdays, noon to 3 p.m. on Saturdays and 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Sundays) and asks visitors to keep the chapel quiet for those praying. The Archbishop Fulton Sheen Museum in Peoria holds a display on his television work.

In El Paso, a marker stands at his birthplace, and St. Mary Church, where he was baptized, becomes part of Blessed Fulton Sheen Parish on December 9, 2026.

Prayers to Blessed Fulton Sheen

The Diocese of Peoria and the Sheen Foundation publish two prayers for his cause, both with the imprimatur of Bishop Daniel R. Jenky of Peoria. They were written before the beatification, which is why they call him Archbishop rather than Blessed. A Mass prayer (Collect) for his feast has been approved and was prayed for the first time at the beatification, but we have not found its official English text published yet, so it is not reproduced here.

Prayer for Canonization

Heavenly Father, source of all holiness, You raise up within the Church in every age men and women who serve with heroic love and dedication. You have blessed Your Church through the life and ministry of Your faithful servant, Archbishop Fulton J Sheen. He has written and spoken well of Your Divine Son, Jesus Christ, and was a true instrument of the Holy Spirit in touching the hearts of countless people. If it be according to Your Will, for the honor and glory of the Most Holy Trinity and for the salvation of souls, we ask You to move the Church to proclaim him a saint. We ask this prayer through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

The line "He has written and spoken well of Your Divine Son" echoes John Paul II's words to Sheen in 1979.

Prayer for Favor

Eternal Father, You alone grant us every blessing in Heaven and on earth, through the redemptive mission of Your Divine Son, Jesus Christ, and by the working of the Holy Spirit. If it be according to Your Will, glorify Your servant, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, by granting the favor I now request through his prayerful intercession (mention your request here) I make this prayer confidently through Jesus Christ, Our Lord. Amen.

Fulton Sheen quotes

Sheen is one of the most quoted Catholics of the 20th century, and many lines attributed to him online can't be traced to anything he wrote or said. These come from sources that can be checked:

• "Prayer is helplessness casting itself on Power, infirmity leaning on Strength, misery reaching to Mercy, and a prisoner clamoring for Relief." (Quoted by the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Foundation on its prayers page.)
• "We must pray, and not for ourselves, but for the world." (On introducing the World Mission Rosary, 1951.)
• "I am not retiring, only retreading." (On resigning as bishop of Rochester, 1969.)
• "My greatest love has always been the missions of the Church." (Shortly before his death, as reported by Agenzia Fides.)
• "I never tire of telling it; I never tire of improving my telling of it." (Speaking of the story of Christ, as quoted by Cardinal Tagle in his homily at the beatification.)

His own books, especially Life of Christ (1958), Life Is Worth Living (five volumes, 1953 to 1957) and the autobiography Treasure in Clay (1980), are the best place to read him at length, alongside the many recordings of his radio and television talks.