The Catholic Patriotic Minute #44: Senator Joseph McCarthy
Catholics For Catholics Special Edition | May 4th, 2026
Venerable Fulton Sheen: America’s Bishop
On May 8, 1895, Peter John Sheen was born in El Paso, Illinois. Soon after, he went by the name Fulton, his mother’s maiden name. The oldest of four sons, Fulton was raised in an Irish family of farmers. While his brothers were more inclined to farming alongside their father, Fulton preferred more academic pursuits. In his autobiography Treasure in Clay, Archbishop Sheen recalled a neighbor telling his father, “Newt, that oldest boy of yours, Fulton, will never be worth a damn. He’s always got his nose in a book.” Sheen went on to write, “My brothers rather enjoyed farm work; I suffered it.”
He attended St. Mary’s Cathedral Grade School in Peoria, Illinois, where he also served as an altar boy for the cathedral. In his autobiography Treasure in Clay, Sheen recounted a prophetic moment shared with his bishop when eight-year-old Fulton served one of his Masses. Fulton had broken a wine cruet, and after Mass, Bishop John L. Spading talked with Fulton to calm down. Bishop Spading told him, “you go home and tell your mother that I said when you get big you are to go to Louvain, and someday you will be just as I am.”
Fulton did not hold onto his bishop’s comment on Sheen becoming a bishop one day, but he did hope for the priesthood. Archbishop Sheen remembered, “I can never remember a time in my life when I did not want to be a priest.” In his teenage years, Fulton would watch his fathers and brothers plow the soil as he prayed the Rosary “begging for a vocation.” He attributed the causes of discovering his vocation to the priesthood to his time as an altar boy, the priests close to the Sheens, and saying the Rosary daily.
It was not until after Fulton’s studies at the Spalding Institute that he confided in his parents regarding his vocation. In response, his parents said, “[w]e always prayed that you might become a priest; if it is your vocation, be a good one.”
Sheen studied at St. Viator College and entered Saint Paul Seminary in Minnesota. On September 20, 1919, Father Fulton Sheen was ordained. He went on to pursue a doctorate in philosophy at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, just as Bishop Spalding predicted when Fulton was eight.
Father Sheen returned to America and subsequently taught theology and philosophy at the Catholic University of America in Washington D.C. from 1927 until 1950. Here, he quickly became known across campus for his talks and sermons. Soon, his reputation reached outside the university.
In 1930, Father Sheen was invited to fill in for another speaker on The Catholic Hour radio program. He became a weekly broadcaster due to the positive response. For the next twenty years, Monsignor Sheen’s weekly show focused on Catholic teaching, moral theology, and the social issues relevant to his time. He received between seventy-five and one-hundred letters per day from his radio audience requiring responses. Although he underwent immense exhaustion from the work of both his broadcasting and his university lectures, Monsignor Sheen wrote once, “the good to be done is such that one dare not shrink from its opportunities for apostolate.”
A fruit of his broadcasting was the opportunity to deliver talks across the nation at churches, retreats, universities, and other Catholic organizations. Monsignor Sheen even appeared on the first ever broadcast of a Catholic service on Easter Sunday of 1940. Before his teaching at Catholic University came to an end in 1950, he had published thirty-four books. After 1950, Monsignor Sheen published thirty-two more books.
Monsignor Sheen left his professorship to serve in the missionary work of The Pontifical Mission Societies USA in the role of National Director. For the following sixteen years, Sheen led the fundraising efforts throughout 129 dioceses in the United States, which resulted in providing aid to tens of millions across the globe.
Just as Bishop Spalding foresaw when Sheen was eight, Sheen did become a bishop. On June 11, 1951, Sheen was consecrated the Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of New York. Later in the fall of 1951, Bishop Sheen started his television series, Life is Worth Living, which eventually earned an audience of about thirty-million viewers weekly. Bishop won an Emmy Award for Most Outstanding Television Personality, to which he responded by giving all credit to his writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
During his public evangelization and his missionary work, Bishop Sheen inspired multiple conversions of private individuals as well as well-known ones, such as the politician Clare Boothe Luce, the automaker Henry Ford II, the Communist writer Louis F. Budenz, and the actress Virginia Mayo.
After his television series ended in 1957, Bishop Sheen lived out his remaining years writing and preaching God’s Word. Bishop Sheen was made the Bishop of the Diocese of Rochester in 1966, and then in 1969 he became the Archbishop of the Titular See of Newport, Wales.
Archbishop Sheen was writing his autobiography Treasure in Clay in the months leading up to his death. In the last chapter, looking back on his life, Archbishop Sheen wrote, “the greatest gift of all may have been His summons to the Cross.” For Venerable Fulton Sheen, his greatest gift in life was suffering, specifically in union with Christ’s suffering on the Cross. Sheen explained further, “[a]ny spirituality that I have revolves around the crucifix and the price of my redemption and the assurance of my resurrection.” He stated, “[t]he crucifix, to me, is not just something that happened; it is something that is happening, for Christ is crucified in every age by every one of us who sin.”
As a priest and bishop, Sheen prayed a holy hour daily in front of the Blessed Sacrament. His last hour alive on earth was spent praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament in his private chapel, on December 9, 1979.
Pope Benedict XVI declared him “Venerable Servant of God Fulton J. Sheen” on June 28, 2012. Venerable Fulton Sheen is set to be beatified on September 24, 2026, in St. Louis, Missouri.
For more Catholic Patriotic Minutes, visit CATHOLICUSA.COM
Save and Share This Catholic Patriotic Minute!
