Blessed Bishop Sheen the (almost)Saint

“We must remember that the Church is not just made up of saints, it’s made up of sinners too. And if it were made up of saints, there wouldn’t be any room for me.” Bishop Fulton Sheen, January 1970

Blessed Fulton Sheen went on nationwide radio in 1933 when only half the households in America had radio sets.

Make that BLESSED Fulton J. Sheen. The Catholic priest just a generation away from rural Ireland who counselled American Catholics on radio and then television through the Depression, World War Two, the Cold War, Vatican Two and Vietnam has been beatified.

Your grandparents and great grandparents might have been among the five million weekly listeners to his radio show: The Catholic Hour on NBC. And the 20 million viewers of his television show: Life Is Worth Living on ABC.

Bishop Sheen isn’t a saint yet, but he’s almost there. Beatification is the final step before sainthood. He’s been credited with one miracle and now needs one more to be Saint Fulton Sheen. As the NY Times points out, “There is no firm timeline for canonization, and not all “blesseds” become saints.”

He went on television in the 1950s and often won in the ratings prime time spot against Milton Berle.

Blessed Fulton Sheen won an Emmy

In 1953, he won the Emmy as Most Outstanding Personality. The compeititon: Milton Berle, Edward R. Murrow and Lucille Ball. The Best Quiz Show that year was “What’s My Line.” Sheen appeared on that show as a celebrity guest. Blindfolded panelists tried to figure out who he was by asking questions. It didn’t take long. Audience reaction gave it away when Sheen walked on stage.. “Well, that’s the most solid round of applause I’ve heard in a long time,” said Bennett Cerf. (Watch it here.)

There had never been a real Catholic priest with such star appeal on America’s air waves. (Bing Crosby as Father Chuck O’Malley in Going My Way doesn’t count.)The consensus among those who have written about the bishop’s unlikely conquest of the secular media is that his presence made Catholicism a mainstem religion in America and wore down the resistance of those who considered it an alien sect.

“I myself am a witness of his evangelization when I was growing up,” PopeLeo in June 2026, recalling the television broadcasts he watched as a boy in Dolton, Illinois.

“He was the first Catholic influencer.” Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City,

Blessed Fulton Sheen endorsed Vatican Two and opposed the Vietnam War

“We are withdrawing at a time when it makes it possible to conclude that we’ve lost our first war.” Bishop Fultn Sheen, 1970

As a broadcaster he was known and loved by conservative non-Catholics for his anti-Communism. He opposed the regime in the Soviet Union as strongly as he had opposed Nazism in the 1930s. That’s why his opposition to the Vietnam War came as an unpleasant surprise to some and to others as a reason to reconsider his work. As for Vatican Two, he was all in. He defended its restructuring of Catholicism and denied that Vatican Two was responsible for falling attendance at Mass. Four years before he died in 1974 Sheen did a “lion in winter” interview with William F. Buckley, who was probably American Catholicism’s most visible traditionalist. Vietnam and Vatican Two took up most of the hour-long program. Buckley, who said the bishop was “a great enigma” and “the greatest preacher in English” is at his acerbic best. Bishop Sheen has lost a step or two but bristles at any suggestion that he had changed since his days denouncing Communism.

A piece of chalk is included in the reliquary for Blessed Bishop Sheen to represent his use of a chalk board on his television show. His jawbone is also a relic.

Actually, Bishop Sheen did get cancelled

"They would have tried to cancel him, but Bishop Sheen would ultimately have ‘the last laugh in heaven’.” Michael Knowles FOX News

Knowes was talking about the criticism he imagines Sheen would face in 2026. As a matter of fact, his message is alive and well online and old videos of Life Is Worth Living are growing in views. He WAS cancelled in 1966 when he got into a row with Francis Cardinal Spellman. The Irish Echo has the story. Francis Cardinal Spellman allegedly became jealous of Sheen's fame as "America's Bishop" and his successful TV show. Spellman demanded $1 million from Sheen’s Society for the Propagation of the Faith for government-donated milk intended for the poor. Refusing to pay, Sheen appealed to Pope Pius XII and won, which enraged Spellman. The New York cardinal reportedly vowed revenge, subsequently forcing Sheen off television and, in 1966, orchestrating his "exile" to the Diocese of Rochester. Sheen, to his credit, never spoke publicly about his conflict with Spellman.

Want to know more about the saga of Blessed Fulton Sheen?

On television: Click here for links to a number of his television appearances INCLUDING the hour-long discussion/debate with William F. Buckley.

https://thegoodnewsroom.org/before-seinfeld-there-was-bishop-fulton-j-sheen/

On opposing the Vietnam War: Click here for the excerpt from his autobiography about his stance. https://www.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/comments/5r5wl1/til_fulton_sheen_was_against_the_vietnam_war/

Full Coverage in AMERICA MAGAZINE: Best ingojng coverage.

https://www.americamagazine.org/?s=Bishop%20Fulton%20Sheen

On his Irish roots: He never played the “Irish card” by channeling Bing Crosby but he was visited his ancestral hme in Co. Rosscommon a few times and was steeped in the social teachings f Archbishop Ireland as a seminarian.

https://www.irishecho.com/2026/4/sheen-cherished-his-irish-roots