This Thursday 24^th September, the Church will have the great joy of declaring Archbishop Fulton Sheen (1895-1979) to be “Blessed.” It will be a particularly special occasion for me, because I have always admired Archbishop Sheen. I first came across him when I was about 11 years old. I remember finding in our church library in Bexhill a book entitled “This is the Mass”, which had photographs of the Archbishop celebrating the traditional Latin Mass, which I found fascinating. He died only a few months later on 9^th December 1979. I didn’t realise at the time he had been one of the twentieth century’s greatest Catholic evangelists and apologists. He wrote over sixty books.

Fulton John Sheen was born in Illinois in 1895 and was ordained a priest in 1919. He was a great scholar and studied in America and Europe. In spite of his great learning and academic ability, he always used his talents to bring souls to JESUS Christ. He also had an interesting connection with England. As a young priest he taught at St Edmund’s College, Ware, and served as a priest at St Patrick’s, Soho Square in London. He also returned to England on many occasions to preach. On Good Friday 1952, a crowd of 20,000 came to hear him preach in Westminster Cathedral!

His extraordinary gift was his ability to communicate the great truths of the Catholic Faith in an ordinary way that people could understand, and his words really seemed to possess the power of the Holy Spirit. He did this through radio, television, and especially on his famous TV programme “Life is Worth Living.” The show had top ratings in the United States and reached millions of viewers, including many non-Catholics. Sheen spoke openly about the Catholic Faith, sin, judgment, Heaven, Purgatory, Hell, the Cross, marriage, the family, communism and atheism. Imagine that today! He didn’t water anything down, because he believed that a priest must have the courage to proclaim the truth, because the salvation of souls depended upon it. This is what made him a prophet, and many of his predictions about the future of the world and the crisis in the Church have come to pass.

Fulton Sheen also had an extraordinary apostolic gift of bringing people into the Catholic Faith and bringing back the lapsed. He converted thousands from all walks of life. One of his most famous converts was Bella Dodd, a former Catholic who became a communist, and tried to destroy the Catholic Church by filling seminaries with communist infiltrators. She eventually came back to the Church in 1952 after coming under Sheen’s influence and instruction.

He always said the secret of his success was not his great learning or the fact he was on television. It was his relationship with JESUS Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. For more than sixty years he made a daily Holy Hour before Our Lord in the tabernacle. And he positioned his office so as he could always see the tabernacle while writing his sermons and books. This was where he found his inspiration. His other great love was Our Lady. I would recommend his book “The World’s First Love” in which he beautifully explains how Mary leads us to Christ.

Archbishop Sheen speaks powerfully to us today, nearly fifty years after his death. He did not attempt to redefine Catholicism according to the spirit of the age. He believed in objective truth, and that right and wrong are not matters of personal opinion. And above all, he believed that JESUS Christ is the only Saviour of the World. And yet he always proclaimed difficult truths with warmth and charity, loving people enough to tell them the truth. This is genuine Catholic evangelisation. At a moving encounter in New York in 1979, St John Paul II told him “You have written and spoken well of the Lord JESUS. You are a loyal son of the Church.” Two months later Fulton Sheen had gone to his eternal reward.

You will find plenty of clips of the great Archbishop online, but the best way to honour him is by reading him. You won’t regret it. I especially recommend “The Life of Christ” which is a magnificent meditation on the Life, Passion, Death and Resurrection of Our Lord, and it is easily available today.

May Blessed Fulton Sheen obtain for us a deeper love of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, a greater devotion to Our Lady and the Rosary, and the courage to live and defend the Catholic Faith.

Fr Paul Gillham, IC