AMERICAN televangelist Archbishop Fulton John Sheen was beatified in St. Louis, Missouri on Sept. 24, 47 years after his death, bringing the pioneering Catholic broadcaster one step away from sainthood.
Pope Leo XIV approved Sheen’s beatification, recognizing the American prelate whose use of radio and television brought Catholic teaching to millions of people and helped launch religious broadcasting to wider audiences.
Sheen was born to a farming family and served as an altar boy under Peoria Bishop John Lancaster Spalding. He studied at St. Viator College and St. Paul Seminary in Minnesota before being ordained a priest in 1919.
He pursued further studies at the Catholic University of America and the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium before returning to the former to teach.
Over the next 23 years, Sheen developed his reputation as a teacher, preacher, orator and evangelist.
As early as 1927, the 30-year-old Sheen was tapped to preach during a university Mass for the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas. A decade later, he served as the principal speaker at the university’s 150th anniversary celebration.
Sheen entered broadcasting as a substitute speaker on the radio program “The Catholic Hour” in 1930. His guest appearance led to a regular role that gave him a national platform for the next two decades.
His broadcasts tackled not only matters of faith but also social and political issues.
Sheen later moved to television with “Life Is Worth Living,” which drew an estimated 20 million to 30 million viewers weekly at its height in the 1950s.
His television work earned him the Emmy Award for Most Outstanding Television Personality and landed him on the cover of Time magazine.
A pioneer in Catholic broadcasting
Sheen’s early adoption of mass media for evangelization helped influence later Catholic broadcasters and religious television networks.
Paterno Esmaquel II, a religion reporter and instructor at the UST Department of Journalism, said Sheen stood out for his willingness to adapt to what was then a new medium.
“At that time, television was just new…and there were even people who would see television as either immoral or not intelligent enough,” Esmaquel told the Varsitarian.
“Fulton Sheen was able to use that media and proclaim Christ without much of the selfish interests that dominate much of our social media ecosystem today,” he added.
Esmaquel said Sheen’s approach also offered lessons for religious communication in an online environment increasingly shaped by polarization.
“We lack in many conversations, in many debates online. It’s either we don’t have the baseline or we refuse to see the baseline because the other person is the enemy,” he said.
He described social media as prone to creating echo chambers rather than communities and said Sheen’s beatification could serve as a reminder for the Church to adapt to new forms of communication.
“Different forms of media come and go, but the faith is one. The faith remains. It should be intact,” Esmaquel said.
Televangelism as a Thomist
Fr. Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P., a professor of sacred theology, said Sheen’s effectiveness as a broadcaster came partly from his ability to make complex philosophical and theological concepts understandable to a mass audience.
“He took very difficult concepts and communicated them using everyday experiences and examples to millions of Americans,” Austriaco told the Varsitarian.
Austriaco said Sheen’s Thomistic formation helped him address contemporary issues through the intellectual framework of St. Thomas Aquinas.
Although Sheen did not study at Dominican universities, Austriaco described him as a Thomist whose philosophical formation allowed him to apply Aquinas’ thought to the issues of his time.
“A Thomist is a person who studies Aquinas and uses his intellectual framework as a guide for how to think,” he said.
‘The priority is to promote the truth’
Austriaco said Sheen’s approach offered a contrast to a contemporary media environment in which visibility and personal branding can compete with the substance of a message.
“For Fulton Sheen, there was only one goal: to speak about things that are true, good, and beautiful,” he said.
“Self-promotion comes second. The priority is to promote the truth,” Austriaco added.
He urged Catholic media practitioners to speak truthfully about everyday experiences while keeping Jesus Christ at the center of their message.
Sheen served as auxiliary bishop of New York and bishop of Rochester and was later named archbishop of the titular see of Newport in Wales.
His cause for sainthood advanced following the recognition of a miracle involving James Fulton Engstrom, an infant who recovered after showing no signs of life for 61 minutes following complications during a home birth in 2010.
Sheen became the first American-born bishop to be beatified. A first-class relic from his jaw was displayed during the beatification Mass.
His beatification leaves canonization, which ordinarily requires the recognition of another miracle attributed to his intercession, as the remaining step toward sainthood. Bruce L. Buenaventura and Yuvshenka Andrea R. Osea
