Vatican approves Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s cause for beatification

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Vatican approves Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s cause for beatification
Bishop Louis Tylka of Peoria announced that the Holy See informed him that renowned evangelist Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen will be beatified after years of delay.



Archbishop Fulton Sheen
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Feb 10, 2026
(LifeSiteNews) — The cause of Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, famous for his decades of televangelism, has been approved for beatification by the Vatican, during which the late bishop will be declared “blessed,” the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, announced on Monday.

In a February 10 statement, Sheen’s home Bishop Louis Tylka of the Diocese of Peoria announced that the Vatican has officially approved the archbishop’s cause for beatification, with a ceremony forthcoming.

Sheen’s beatification was initially approved in 2019 but was delayed by the Diocese of Rochester, New York, as a precautionary measure, as the diocese – where he served as bishop – faced over 70 sex abuse allegations. However, the late bishop of Rochester had never been accused of abuse or cover-up.

“The Holy See has informed me that the Cause for the Venerable Servant of God Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen can proceed to Beatification,” Tylka wrote. “The next step in the process is the celebration of the Beatification, in which Fulton Sheen would be declared ‘Blessed.'”

Sheen was declared “venerable” by Pope Benedict XVI in 2011, meaning that he was recognized as having lived a life of heroic virtue.

Beatification, the first major step towards canonization, means the sovereign pontiff has declared that the individual not only lived a holy life but is in Heaven and requires that one miracle be attributed to his or her intercession. In 2019, Pope Francis recognized the miraculous healing of a stillborn child that had been credited to the late archbishop’s intercession.

Sheen was a popular teacher and radio and television personality in the 1950s and 1960s in the United States. His television show “Life is Worth Living” reached millions of viewers of all backgrounds, supplementing more than 50 books.

“Archbishop Fulton Sheen was one of the greatest voices of evangelization in the Church and the world in the 20th century,” Tylka wrote in the announcement.

The bishop continued:

I have long admired his lifelong commitment to serve the Church as a priest, rooted in his deep devotion to the Blessed Mother and the Eucharist. As he journeyed through the different stages of his life, his ability to share the Gospel and truly relate to people drew countless souls into an encounter with Jesus – one that transformed not only his life, but more importantly, the lives of those he touched.

While the Catholic evangelist and media personality was expected to be beatified in 2019, the Vatican announced just a few weeks prior that the ceremony was to be postponed.

It was later revealed that the delay in the beatification was triggered by Bishop Salvatore Matano of the Diocese of Rochester as a precautionary measure while that diocese sorted through sex abuse lawsuits that had been recently filed at the time.

Sheen was bishop of Rochester from 1966 to 1969. A probe by Church authorities, who also revealed their results to civil authorities, found no allegations of abuse or cover-up on the archbishop’s part.

However, in its last-minute statement on December 5, 2019, the Rochester diocese cited concerns about advancing Sheen’s beatification “without a further review of his role in priests’ assignments.” While acknowledging that it had done its “due diligence in this matter,” the statement said that the beatification process allegedly needed “further study and deliberation.”

Sheen preached several sermons and conferences that are especially relevant in today’s crisis in both the Church and the world.

In an address on confession, he was discussing sin and its resulting weight of guilt on overall health when he turned to the question of what these impacts could mean in the United States following the infamous U.S. Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion.

“Just think, my dear ladies, of how many mentally disturbed women we are going to have in the United States in the next 10 or 15 years when the guilt of abortion begins to attack the mind and soul,” he considered.

In 1947, in one of his most memorable radio sermons, then-Bishop Sheen laid out the dozen or so tricks the anti-Christ will use to destroy Christians and declared the anti-Christ would set up a “counter church” or the “ape of the church.”

“(The antichrist) will write books on the new idea of God to suit the way people live. He will invoke religion to destroy religion. He will even speak of Christ and say that he was the greatest man who ever lived,” Sheen said at the time.

“In the midst of all his seeming love for humanity and his glib talk of freedom and equality, he will have one great secret which he will tell to no one; he will not believe in God,” the bishop continued. “And because his religion will be brotherhood without the fatherhood of God, he will deceive even the elect.”

“He will set up a counter-Church, which will be the ape of the Church because he, the devil, is the ape of God. It will be the mystical body of the anti-Christ that will in all externals resemble the Church as the mystical body of Christ. In desperate need for God, he will induce modern man, in his loneliness and frustration, to hunger more and more for membership in his community that will give man enlargement of purpose, without any need of personal amendment and without the admission of personal guilt. These are days in which the devil has been given a particularly long rope,” he added.

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The Catacombs note: While the early talks and instruction of Archbishop Sheen were mostly admirable, it appears that he was nevertheless a true modernist. From a recent TIA article:

He was a modernist and an ecumenist to the core, and moreover an admirer of Teilhard de Chardin. [...]

Archbishop Sheen, an Enthusiast of Vatican II
Fulton Sheen, a Fan of Teilhard de Chardin
Fulton Sheen’s Flaws in Rhetorics
Sheen’s Co-Ownership Is Opposed to Catholic Teaching
Fulton Sheen Visits the Rochester’s Synagogue
Fulton Sheen’s ‘Ecumenical Firsts’ Bishop of Rochester
Arch. Fulton Sheen Pushes Vatican II Reforms
How Sheen’s Ecumenical Seminary Came to Life