PEORIA, Illinois (CNA/EWTN News) – Australia’s Perth-based promoters of the canonisation cause of renowned TV evangelist Archbishop Fulton Sheen are confident it will continue unabated despite disputes over the final resting place of his remains.
The Diocese of Peoria has resumed its promotion of Archbishop Sheen’s cause for beatification despite its dispute with the Archdiocese of New York over the final resting place of the great evangelist’s remains.
In November 2010, the diocese said it was no longer in a position to continue its nine years of work on Archbishop Sheen’s beatification and canonisation. The Archdiocese of New York’s failure to transfer Sheen’s body to a Cathedral tomb in his hometown of Peoria had upset the diocese and stalled plans to create a national shrine for him there.
Now Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria has announced that the Archbishop Fulton John Sheen Foundation has resumed its efforts to advance Sheen’s cause.
Daniel Tobin, who founded the Fulton Sheen Society in Perth with his son Martin in 1999, said they believe the Cause “will continue in the same positive vein that Bishop Jenky CSC directed, because of the great interest in Archbishop Sheen in New York and the admiration that the present Archbishop of New York,Timothy Dolan, has for the life and legacy of Archbishop Sheen”.
Monsignor Peter Wells, an official at the Vatican’s Secretary of State, received materials supporting the Archbishop’s cause from the Tobins and has forwarded them to Pope Benedict XVI. “The Holy Father has asked me to assure you of his prayers,” Mgr Wells told the Tobins.
The US-based Sheen Foundation said in a 27 January statement that, after further consultation and having “heard the desire of the faithful to see the cause advance, Bishop Jenky, as president of the Sheen Foundation, is happy to work with the postulator in Rome and is hopeful that the Cause will advance quickly”.
The foundation added that the Archdiocese of New York’s failure to fulfill a verbal promise to transfer Sheen’s remains caused “great upset and even scandal among those who had so long supported the cause”, and that the people and clergy of the Diocese of Peoria were “particularly distressed”.
Patricia Gibson, chancellor of the Diocese of Peoria and an officer of the Sheen Foundation, explained that Bishop Jenky felt compelled at the time to pause the beatification effort “in light of the months of unresolved questions regarding the transfer of the remains.”
“Even though this issue remains unsettled, Bishop Jenky received encouragement from Cardinals, Bishops and the faithful from around the world, and especially from within his own diocese,” she said. Bishop Jenky has asked the Vatican congregation for saints to help resolve the question of the tomb, while also definitively deciding to continue the foundation’s work to advance Archbishop Sheen’s Cause. Sheen Foundation executive director Mgr Stanley Deptula said: “Sheen was born in Peoria. His cause for sainthood was begun in Peoria. And I look forward to seeing this good work completed in Peoria.”
Sheen has a significant history in both Peoria and New York City. He first served as an altar boy in Peoria’s Cathedral and was ordained a priest for the diocese in 1919. After international studies, he briefly served as a pastor there in 1926.
He was ordained as an Auxiliary Bishop in New York City in 1951 and broadcast his famous television programme Life is Worth Living from there. He was Bishop of Rochester from 1966 until his 1969 retirement and was buried in the crypt of St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City after his death in 1979. Sheen was one of the first national television personalities and an author of bestselling works on Christianity and Jesus Christ.
More information about his life is available at the Sheen Foundation website: http://www.ArchbishopSheenCause.org.
– Additional reporting by The Record