Fulton Sheen, the bishop who beat Lucille Ball at the Emmys, will be beatified in St. Louis

In 1953, Lucille Ball lost an Emmy to a Catholic bishop. Accepting the award, the bishop reportedly quipped about paying tribute to his four writers — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. More than four decades after his death, and following a path to this moment that was anything but smooth, Fulton J. Sheen takes the next step toward sainthood at a beatification Mass in St. Louis on Thursday, September 24, 2026.

The ceremony takes place at the Dome at America's Center, the former NFL stadium, and will be presided over by Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, representing Pope Leo XIV. It will be broadcast by Catholic media network EWTN and livestreamed by the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois — the diocese where Sheen was ordained and whose bishop is the promoter of his sainthood cause.

Beatification confers the title 'Blessed' and requires the Vatican to have found two things: that the candidate lived a life of 'heroic virtue,' and that a miracle occurred through his or her intercession. Sheen clears both bars on Thursday. He now needs one more verified miracle to be canonized — declared a saint.

Sheen was born on May 8, 1895, in El Paso, Illinois, to an Irish family. He discovered his vocation at 24, was ordained a priest in 1919, and went on to study at the Catholic University of America, the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, and the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, according to Vatican News. He returned to the United States in 1926 and taught at the Catholic University of America until 1950.

His fame was built on mass media. In 1930 he joined the Sunday radio program 'The Catholic Hour,' which at its peak reached an estimated four million listeners. In 1951 he began hosting 'Life Is Worth Living,' a weekly television series on matters of faith that attracted some 30 million viewers — and that Emmy, beating Ball, Edward R. Murrow and presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson. From 1951 to 1969 he held the post of Bishop of Rochester, New York, after which Pope Paul VI named him Titular Archbishop of Newport, Wales. He died in New York on December 9, 1979, at the age of 84.

The miracle at the center of Thursday's beatification belongs to a family from Peoria. In 2010, Bonnie Engstrom was pregnant with her son James Fulton — named in part for Sheen — and had been watching recordings of his shows on YouTube. She and her husband Travis had the custom of placing each child under the patronage of a saint, and they chose to pray for Sheen's intercession.

He was so intelligent, but I felt like he had a way of taking really complex philosophy and political thought to break it down for the masses.— Bonnie Engstrom

James was to be her third planned home birth, and everything had pointed to a healthy pregnancy. But when the midwife handed him to her, he was, in her words, 'completely limp' and a 'bluish-gray' color. While the midwife administered CPR, her husband performed an emergency baptism as a friend dialed 911.

I just remember sitting on the floor and not really being able to process anything, but I remember thinking in my head, 'Fulton Sheen, Fulton Sheen, Fulton Sheen.'— Bonnie Engstrom

James had no heartbeat at home, in the ambulance, or when he first arrived at the emergency room. Days later, a physician in the neonatal intensive care unit calculated that James had been without a heartbeat for one hour and one minute. Today he is a healthy 16-year-old who serves as team manager for his high school's freshmen football team. At Thursday's Mass, he and his family will carry the Sheen relic to the altar.

I think very much so that Bishop Sheen made a Holy Hour, and when that Holy Hour was over, that was when Jesus Christ brought James back to life. It was at 61 minutes, not 59.— Bonnie Engstrom

The Vatican's process for verifying the miracle — establishing that it had no medical explanation and that Sheen's intercession was responsible — was extensive. Engstrom said she has come to appreciate how thorough that investigation was: 'I now know how thoroughly that has been investigated, and there's a lot of rigor that goes into it.'

That rigor extended to Sheen's broader cause, which took decades and hit serious obstacles. The scope of the effort was laid out by Kathleen Sprows Cummings, a history professor at the University of Notre Dame who has studied American saints.

The heavy lifting in a canonization happens before a miracle. That's when you gather all the evidence, and you have to weigh everything the saint ever said or did or wrote.— Kathleen Sprows Cummings, history professor, University of Notre Dame

Sheen's path was complicated by two separate disputes. The first centered on a public legal fight over where his remains should rest: the Archdiocese of New York contended that Sheen would have wished to stay in his original burial place, while Sheen's niece, supported by the Diocese of Peoria, maintained that the sainthood cause could not move forward without a transfer of the remains. The Archdiocese of New York relented and approved the move in 2019.

Then, just weeks before a beatification ceremony planned for 2019, several members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops asked for a postponement to ensure Sheen had not mishandled accusations of sexual abuse by a priest — a request that came the same year New York passed a law expanding the timeframe for abuse victims to pursue civil or criminal justice. When a New York lookback process turned up no concerns, the Vatican lifted the six-year pause on Sheen's cause and cleared it to proceed in February 2026, according to Religion News Service.

Pope Benedict XVI had declared Sheen 'Venerable' in 2012 after recognizing his heroic virtue. Pope Francis authorized the decree recognizing the miracle in 2019. Thursday's ceremony, with Cardinal Tagle presiding on behalf of Pope Leo XIV, closes the gap between those two steps.

For Peoria Bishop Louis Tylka, the promoter of Sheen's cause, the beatification is also a moment to highlight what he sees as Sheen's most practical legacy: the daily Holy Hour, an hour of prayer before the consecrated Communion host.

One of his lasting legacies is the example and invitation for us to, like him, deepen our friendship with Jesus each and every day by being people of prayer, and in particular, praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament.— Bishop Louis Tylka, Diocese of Peoria, promoter of Sheen's cause

According to Tylka, Sheen's own practice has been among the foremost factors driving the Holy Hour's growing appeal among priests and seminarians. After Thursday, the man who once charmed prime-time America with theology on a blackboard will carry the title 'Blessed Fulton Sheen' — and the search for one more miracle will begin.

Why it matters — Sheen's beatification is the first step toward what would be a rare canonization of an American, and it marks a milestone for Catholic media and evangelization in the United States.

Reported by religionnews.com, vaticannews.va