Bishop Fulton Sheen 30th anniversary: Sainthood?

Archbishop Timothy Dolan led a memorial Mass on Wednesday evening at St. Patrick’s Cathedral to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the death of Bishop

Sheen. An auxiliary bishop of the New York Archdiocese from 1951 to 1965, the man whom the Rev. Billy Graham called “the greatest communicator of the 20th century” is buried in a crypt under the cathedral altar, which was open for public viewing before the Mass.

“He showed the broad American public that the truths of our faith were consonant with the highest values of the society: patriotism, God, family and the struggle against Communism,” said that boy, now known as Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York.

In a way, the event — which attracted Roman Catholic dignitaries, parishioners from across the country and two great-great nieces of the bishop — served unofficially as promotion for a little-noticed campaign to make Bishop Sheen, the first and greatest Catholic televangelist, a saint of the church.

After 20 years in radio, Bishop Sheen scored a hit with his first weekly TV show, “Life is Worth Living,” on the DuMont network. The program drew tens of millions of viewers on Tuesday nights from 1951 to 1957, though it appeared opposite giants of early television like Lucille Ball and Milton Berle (who once quipped that the bishop was pretty good for a guy who “uses old material”).

In those broadcasts, and a similar show syndicated from 1961 to 1968, the bishop, an Illinois farmer’s son who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Marxism, used a polished extemporaneous style to comment on topics of the day, whether movies, Broadway plays or international politics. Among his most famous half-hour commentaries was a 1953 denunciation of Joseph Stalin.

“When he came upon the scene, there was still wavering doubt about whether Catholics were truly American,” said John L. Allen Jr., an author of books about Catholicism and senior correspondent for The National Catholic Reporter, an independent newspaper. “Sheen clinched the deal with the general public, showing that you could be completely Catholic and completely American.”

Some scholars credit the popularity of his broadcast with making possible the 1960 election of the country’s first and only Catholic president, John F. Kennedy.