Last Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026, the Catholic Church in the United States witnessed an event of unusual historical and spiritual significance: the beatification of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. In St. Louis, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, as the representative of Pope Leo XIV, presided over a solemn Mass in which Archbishop Sheen formally received the title “Blessed.” The Church recognized his heroic virtues in 2012, and in 2019 Pope Francis authorized the decree recognizing a miracle attributed to his intercession. The beatification of Archbishop Sheen is an event of particular significance for the Catholic Church in the United States. It is a moment to give thanks for the holiness of an extraordinary American bishop, priest, teacher and missionary, but also an invitation to rediscover his remarkable contribution to the evangelization of the modern world.
Born in El Paso, Illinois, in 1895 and ordained a priest for the Diocese of Peoria in 1919, Fulton Sheen pursued advanced studies in philosophy and theology in the United States and Europe before becoming a distinguished professor at The Catholic University of America. In 1951, he was ordained a bishop and served for many years as an auxiliary bishop of New York, later becoming bishop of Rochester. He died in New York in 1979. Yet, these basic facts tell only part of his remarkable story. Archbishop Sheen became one of the most recognizable Catholic voices of 20th-century America and one of the great pioneers of modern evangelization.
Long before anyone spoke of the “New Evangelization,” Blessed Fulton Sheen was already putting its missionary impulse into practice. He understood that the Church cannot simply wait for people to come through her doors. She must go out to meet them, enter the places where they live and converse, understand their questions, and proclaim the Gospel there with clarity, intelligence and confidence.
Blessed Fulton Sheen recognized the enormous potential of the communications media of his time. Through radio and especially television, he reached millions of Americans. His famous program, Life Is Worth Living, made a Catholic bishop one of the most recognizable figures in American culture. Yet, what is most remarkable is not simply that millions watched him but what he chose to tell them.
Blessed Fulton Sheen did not achieve popularity by hiding his Catholic identity or softening the Gospel. He spoke openly about God, Christ, sin, conversion, grace, suffering, marriage, death and eternal life. He demonstrated that the Christian message, proclaimed with conviction and in language people can understand, retains an extraordinary power to attract the human heart.
In this sense, Sheen remains strikingly contemporary. The technologies have changed, but the evangelical challenge has not. Today, the Church encounters people through social media, podcasts, livestreams and countless digital platforms. Sheen reminds us that these instruments can become genuine means of evangelization when Christ remains at the center. Technology is the instrument; the Gospel is the message.
There was also remarkable intellectual depth to his evangelization. Blessed Fulton Sheen spoke about philosophy, psychology, politics, communism, marriage, suffering, human freedom and the meaning of life, illuminating these subjects through the Gospel. He possessed the rare gift of making profound truths accessible without making them superficial. He showed that the Catholic faith has nothing to fear from the great questions of the human mind and heart.
Yet, the deepest secret of Blessed Fulton Sheen’s effectiveness was neither his intelligence nor his extraordinary gift for communication. It was his personal holiness. Behind the famous television personality stood a bishop devoted to prayer and the Eucharist. His writings on the Holy Hour reflect the importance he gave to daily prayer before God. Before Sheen spoke to millions about Christ, he sought to spend time with Christ.
This dimension of his witness is especially meaningful for us bishops. Episcopal ministry brings enormous responsibilities: teaching, governing, administration, decision-making and pastoral care. Blessed Fulton Sheen reminds us that beneath them all lies the bishop’s fundamental identity: he is first a disciple of Jesus Christ and a successor of the apostles. The Church needs bishops capable of governing wisely and communicating effectively, but above all she needs holy bishops — men whose proclamation of Christ flows from their own friendship with him.
Blessed Fulton Sheen himself knew the crosses of episcopal ministry. He experienced misunderstandings, disappointments and suffering. His holiness was not lived apart from the difficulties of ecclesial life but amid them. His witness reminds us that the strength of a bishop cannot ultimately come from popularity, influence or human success but from fidelity to Christ.
That is why Sheen’s cause for beatification matters today. Our world possesses more means of communication than any previous generation, yet it continues to hunger for meaning, truth and hope. Blessed Fulton Sheen understood that beneath the cultural and social questions of every age lies the deepest question of the human heart: What makes life truly worth living?
His answer was Jesus Christ.
Nearly half a century after his death, Blessed Fulton Sheen continues to evangelize. The Church presents him as a model of missionary discipleship and episcopal holiness — not merely as a brilliant communicator from another era. In the age of artificial intelligence, which presents both opportunities and serious challenges, his life reminds us that methods, technologies and cultures will change, but the heart of evangelization will not: to know Jesus Christ, to love him, to become holy in him and to make him known. On the footsteps of our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, in Magnifica Humanitas, the new frontier of artificial intelligence must, therefore, be approached in the spirit of this formidable evangelizer: with the courage of the Gospel and a readiness to proclaim everywhere the goodness of Jesus of Nazareth.
Bishop Manuel de Jesús Rodríguez
