ROME (AP) — The Vatican has given the green light, again, to beatify Archbishop Fulton Sheen, the popular U.S. radio and TV preacher whose path to sainthood was derailed first by a lengthy court battle over his remains and then by concerns about how he handled clergy sexual misconduct cases.
After a rare six-year delay to investigate the concerns, Sheen’s beatification can now take place in Peoria, Ill., as originally planned, the Peoria diocese announced Monday.
No new date for the ceremony, the last major step before possible sainthood, was immediately announced. But the Vatican’s approval now sets the stage for the Illinois-born Sheen to be beatified during the pontificate of the Illinois-born Pope Leo XIV.
“The Holy See has informed me that the cause for the Venerable Servant of God Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen can proceed to beatification,” Peoria Bishop Louis Tylka said in a written and video statement on the websites of the diocese and the Sheen foundation. “We are working with the Dicastery of the Causes of Saints at the Vatican to determine the details for the upcoming beatification.”
Sheen was an enormously effective evangelizer in the 20th century U.S. church, who in some ways pioneered televangelism with his 1950s television series, “Life is Worth Living.” According to Catholic University of America, where he studied and taught before he was made a bishop, Sheen won an Emmy Award, was featured on the cover of Time Magazine “and became one of th …