Tens of thousands of Roman Catholics are gathering in Missouri for the beatification of Fulton John Sheen, the Bishop of Rochester, whose weekly TV show once rivaled Frank Sinatra’s in popularity.

Sheen, who died in 1979, will be beatified on Thursday afternoon in a ceremony at the Dome at America’s Center stadium in St. Louis. The beatification had been placed on hold for several years as the Catholic Church searched for a venue large enough to accommodate the 50,000 or so attendees expected.

Sheen’s beatification mass will be live streamed, starting at 2 PM St. Louis time (9 PM Central European Time)

Pope Leo XIV, who grew up just over 100 miles from Sheen’s first Diocese of Peoria, hailed the archbishop in an address at the Vatican on Wednesday. “May the example and intercession of this holy bishop, known for his evangelizing work through the media, inspire many others likewise to find new ways of spreading the gospel message with joyful enthusiasm,” the pontiff said. 

Ordained a priest of the Diocese of Peoria in Illinois in 1919, Sheen became known as a keen theologian and philosopher. He was appointed auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of New York in 1951, Archbishop of Rochester in 1966, and the ceremonial Archbishop of Newport after his retirement in 1969.

Sheen’s influence, however, spread far beyond these dioceses. While a priest in Peoria, Sheen began hosting ‘The Catholic Hour’, a weekly radio show that drew roughly four million listeners by 1950. Two television shows – ‘Life is Worth Living’ and ‘The Fulton Sheen Program’ followed.

‘Life is Worth Living’ aired at the same time as hit shows featuring Frank Sinatra and comedian Fulton Berle, and was widely expected to flop. However, it defied expectations, and when Sinatra’s show was canceled in 1952, Sheen’s program was the most popular of the three. 

Sinatra and Berle had house bands, dancers, and lavish production budgets. However, with just a blackboard to illustrate his message, Sheen pulled in 30 million viewers per week at the height of his show’s popularity – a fifth of the US population at the time. Remarkably, it was estimated that 70% of his audience were Protestants, Jews, and non-believers.

Although Sheen was a rigid believer in Catholic doctrine, he said that his show was “directed to Catholics, Protestants, Jews and all men of good will.” Sheen said that he would open with “something that was common to the audience and to me, I would gradually proceed from the known to the unknown or to the moral and Christian philosophy.”

Beatification is one step below canonization (the bestowing of sainthood) in Catholic law. As of the early 1980s, one miracle must be attributed to a person before they can be beatified. In 2019, Pope Francis formally recognized that a baby born without a heartbeat had been revived to perfect health after its parents prayed for Sheen’s intercession.