Saints

From across the United States and around the world, faithful of all ages have traveled to St. Louis for the Sept. 24 beatification of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen — and several pilgrims described the occasion as both a “gift” and a call to be missionary disciples.

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen — the 20th-century theologian, evangelizer and Catholic communications pioneer — “opened the door to the evangelization of the world,” said Bishop Robert E. Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota.

Archbishop Sheen was born on May 8, 1895 in El Paso, Ill. He grew up in Peoria, Ill., where he attended Spalding Institute high school and later attended St. Viator College in Bourbonnais, Ill. He was ordained as a priest in 1919 for the Diocese of Peoria, and eventually served as auxiliary bishop of New York 1951-66 and as bishop of Rochester 1966-69. Upon his retirement in 1969, he was given the honorary title of archbishop.

The grace of the beatification of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen comes with corresponding responsibility for Catholics in his home diocese of Peoria, Illinois, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle told Catholics there during Mass Sept. 22.

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen “knew Jesus Christ, our Lord” and understood that “the Gospel always sends us outward” to share God’s love with the world, said the homilist at Mass marking the anniversary of Archbishop Sheen’s priestly ordination before his beatification Sept. 24.