There was a particular sound that caught my attention at the beatification Mass for Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen last week.
The applause and cheers when he was officially declared “Blessed” were expected. So were the singing and prayers throughout the Mass. In the moments of silence among the 50,000 worshippers gathered in The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, what I noticed were the sounds of infants and small children as they cried, laughed and talked.
To me, it was a visible sign of a young church that includes many parents who did not know Sheen during his lifetime, but who came to know and love him decades later. And whose devotion now runs deep enough to bring their children to the Mass.
I am among those too young to have experienced Sheen as he evangelized to millions through the media of his time—on radio in the 1930s and ’40s, and on primetime television in the 1950s and ’60s.
In my youth, I would occasionally hear his name from people of my parents’ and grandparents’ generation, but it wasn’t until I began my career in the Catholic press in the late 1990s that I discovered more about his life and work of using the media to share the Gospel.
Sheen was a magnetic television personality, but at the same time, what struck me was that he took a sincere approach in teaching the truths of the Catholic faith. His work was rooted in prayer and a divine relationship with the Lord. What stood out to me the most about his efforts was how he would turn individual human encounters into vehicles for larger lessons about God and the Catholic faith.
In his autobiography, Treasure in Clay, Sheen recalled a visit from Bella Dodd, a Communist Party official who spent years working to undermine the church. Noticing her sadness, he brought her into his chapel to pray. “While we knelt, silently she began to cry,” he wrote. “She was touched by grace.”
His primetime network television show “Life Is Worth Living” drew millions of weekly viewers at its peak during the 1950s and included no fancy set or special effects, just a blackboard and a cape. When he received an Emmy for Most Outstanding Television Personality in 1953, he thanked his writers: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Sheen was operating within a culture that offered fewer media platforms than today, but was perhaps more receptive to those platforms carrying religious messages. Still, Sheen didn’t hesitate to speak clearly on matters of faith.
I have been blessed to live out in my own career those values that first drew me to Sheen, through my work in covering the Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of St. Louis. This became ever more apparent when I joined dozens of media to cover the events surrounding his beatification, where I saw in journalists and in attendees so many others committed to Sheen’s commitment to truth and close attention to the individual person.
Among the pilgrims who came to St. Louis were the Steins of Peoria, Ill., whose relationship with Sheen spans several generations. Laurel Stein grew up hearing about him from grandparents who never missed “Life Is Worth Living.” Two decades ago, she moved to Peoria and found herself getting to know Sheen more intimately: Her parish, St. Mark Catholic Church, is where Sheen’s parents worshiped and where their funeral Masses were held. Her family has brought Sheen into their lives elsewhere, from their homeschool co-op to praying at his tomb when his remains were moved to Peoria in 2019.
She also was among those offering prayers through the intercession of Sheen when she learned that baby James Fulton Engstrom was born without a pulse. Engstrom’s miraculous survival cleared the way for Sheen’s beatification.
Ms. Stein told me of Sheen: “He spoke the truth…and he spoke it beautifully. If there’s one thing I can pass along to my children, it’s to speak truth without fear, and as beautifully as you can.”
Her daughter Ellie, 16, never knew a world with Sheen in it. But in learning about him, she was struck by the seemingly ordinary nature of his work: “He was just a priest who was trying to spread the Gospel,” she said.
Sheen’s timeless message was bigger than any particular medium or cultural trend of his time. To me, his work demonstrates that media as ministry isn’t simply about having a presence in the popular platform of the day, but about leading with an underlying sense of honesty in sharing the Gospel message.
I saw that spirit in my colleagues while reporting on the beatification. Reporters from The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune stood alongside OSV News, diocesan newspapers and Catholic broadcasters to cover this historic event. But beyond the beatification Mass, many of us were doing something Sheen instinctively understood—moving through the tens of thousands of pilgrims, listening to their stories of why they came, asking what his life meant to them and how they were inspired to grow in holiness, too.
The platforms for sharing those stories have shifted since Sheen’s time—many of us are now found on Instagram reels and YouTube shorts instead of network television programs—but our work remains the same.
In the middle of the crowd at the beatification Mass, I met James Jenkins of Cincinnati. Wearing a baseball cap adorned with a collection of religious pins he designed, the 36-year-old spent nearly 13 years away from the church before a healing experience on St. Padre Pio’s feast day brought him back to the faith.
Sober now for five years, he has traded a former Grateful Dead lifestyle for what he calls “grateful living”—creating lapel pins of Sheen, and one of a Sacred Heart monstrance, inspired by Sheen’s daily Holy Hour.
Jenkins regularly watches recordings of “Life Is Worth Living” on YouTube. “It’s crazy to see how things that happened in the ’50s, you can relate it to the 2020s,” he told me. “[Sheen] could see what was going to happen—it’s like the Holy Spirit granted him those gifts to see where he comes from in these times, to the kids and the youth that are living in the now that are fighting to keep their faith alive.”
Our conversation served as a reminder that, although Sheen stepped away from television broadcasting in 1968, his message is still being transmitted generations later.
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