United States archbishop and evangelist Venerable Fulton Sheen will soon be beatified, now that the Vatican has given the green light, the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, announced yesterday. Source: OSV News.
No date or location for the beatification was given.
The announcement comes six years after the Holy See had postponed the beatification, initially scheduled for December 2019, only weeks before the event was to take place.
“The Holy See has informed me that the Cause for the Venerable Servant of God Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen can proceed to beatification,” Bishop Louis Tylka of Peoria said in a statement yesterday.
“The next step in the process is the celebration of the beatification, in which Fulton Sheen would be declared Blessed.”
“Archbishop Fulton Sheen was one of the greatest voices of evangelisation in the Church and the world in the 20th century,” Bishop Tylka said.
Born May 8, 1895, Archbishop Sheen resolved to serve the Church as a priest from an early age. He ordained to the priesthood in 1919, for the Peoria Diocese. He died on December 9, 1979, in New York City, in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.
Archbishop Sheen’s cause for canonisation opened in 2002, has been stalled by two controversies — a public battle to relocate his remains from St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York to its current location in Peoria; and, more significantly, concerns that as bishop of Rochester from 1966-1969, the prelate might have overlooked sexual abuse by at least one former diocesan priest there.
In July 2019, then-Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria announced that Pope Francis had approved a miracle attributed to the intercession of Archbishop Sheen, which paved the way for the announcement that he would be beatified.
The announcement was made on November 18, 2019, that Pope Francis had called for the beatification to be held December 21, 2019, in Peoria.
On December 3, 2019, the Peoria Diocese announced the Holy See had decided to postpone the beatification ceremony “at the request of a few members” of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops over the possibility that abuse-related concerns might surface.
In December 2024, Msgr Jason Gray, executive director of the Archbishop Fulton John Sheen Foundation, said “Sheen is clean … Not one accusation has been raised that impugned Sheen.”
FULL STORY
Archbishop Fulton J Sheen beatification advances after 6-year pause (By Gina Christian, Michael R. Heinlein, OSV News)
