Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen was a member of the
Knights of Columbus Rochester Council No. 178 and
of the Bishop James E. Kearney Assembly, both
based in Rochester, New York
The
following was reprinted with permission from Columbia
Magazine,
courtesy of the Knights of Columbus Supreme
Council, New Haven, CT.
Fulton J. Sheen was born
in El Paso, Ill., in 1895. He was ordained in
1919 for the Diocese of Peoria, Ill., and studied
in Europe before being recalled by his bishop.
Sheen served as a parish priest for a year before
becoming a professor of philosophy at the
Catholic University of America in Washington,
D.C., where he taught for 25 years.
Archbishop Sheen gained worldwide
fame in the 1950s as a radio and television host
and author. By some estimates he had an average
weekly listening audience of 4 million persons in
the United States alone during the height of his
radio popularity. He began appearing on TV in
1951 in his Life is Worth Living series,
reaching 30 million people each week.
In 1950 he was named director of
the U.S. office of the Society for the
Propagation of the Faith, and was named a bishop
the following year. He attended all of the
sessions of the Second Vatican Council in Rome,
from 1960-1965. He served as bishop of Rochester,
NY from 1966-1969. In the latter year, Pope Paul
VI named him an archbishop. He died in New York
City on December 9, 1979, a few months after he
was honored by Pope John Paul II during the
pontiff's visit to St. Patrick's Cathedral.
Archbishop Sheen encouraged the
practice of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament,
saying that the idea of keeping a daily hour of
prayer came to him while he was a student at St.
Paul seminary in 1918. He maintained a holy hour
observance for the rest of his life.
A Fourth Degree Knight,
Archbishop Sheen delivered the keynote address at
the Knights of Columbus Supreme Convention in
1970 and again in 1975.
In 2002, the Diocese of Peoria
officially opened his cause for canonization.
Documentation of two alleged miracles attributed
to Archbishop Sheen's intercession were sent to
the Vatican last summer as part of the promotion
of his sainthood cause.
‘Discover
the World’
EXCERPTS FROM ARCHBISHOP
SHEEN’S 1970 SUPREME CONVENTION TALK
One of the signs of the
times is that we must re-examine our goals. Plans
must be laid for a new world. Our mission has to
be re-examined. We are in a new world. And the
sooner we meet this challenge, the sooner we
shall be strong again. This is the first general
sign of the times: readapt. What the Second
Vatican Council did, that the Knights must do
– readapt ourselves to the times.
Your theology is a theology of
action. It is related to the world, to social
problems, to economic problems, to the 250,000
who sleep in the streets of Calcutta, to the
increasing poverty in Latin America, to our
slums.
The bases of your theology also
must be charity, but not charity that is private,
or personal, or of the neighborhood. Lay theology
of charity is related to the world – not
just to the membership – but to the same
problems which concern our politicians and
economists. But you will do it with a different
motivation. Because you have the faith, your
inspiration will be the realization that Christ
is in agony in men until the end of the world.
Christ is on the cross not in the nature He took
from Mary, but in His mystical body and in
humanity. As one sees in India people starving in
the streets, starving mothers with famished
children strapped to their backs, one is looking
at Christ who said: “I was hungry, I was
thirsty, I was naked.”
Such is the motivation of your
theology – the seeing of Christ in everyone.
My dear Knights of Columbus, the
nights are over. Walk in daylight. Columbus
discovered America; now you must discover the
world.
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Dear Brothers in
the Knights of Columbus,
May the Lord give you His peace!
First of all, I would like to extend my warmest
wishes for a blessed Christmas to you and your
Council! I pray that the joy and peace that was
so present on that first Christmas will fill your
hearts during this blessed season and all through
the New Year.
One of my favorite quotes of the late Archbishop
Sheen about this wonderful time of the year is
the following:
“Only two classes of people found the
Babe on that first Christmas: the shepherds and
the Wise Men; the simple and the learned; those
who knew that they knew very little, and those
who knew that they did not know everything. Not
even God can tell the proud anything! Only the
humble can find God!”
How true these words are, yet
how difficult it can sometimes be for us to
practice the virtue of humility!
As we draw to the end of a very busy year, I feel
very blessed and edified to be actively working
for the canonization cause of one of your
brothers, a Fourth Degree Knight - Archbishop
Fulton J. Sheen. I would like to take a moment to
share with you a bit of how my personal
experiences with the Archbishop Sheen Foundation
and the cause for his canonization have been such
humbling experiences for me.
As many of you may know I had the great blessing
of being ordained by the late Archbishop nearly
40 years ago. How well I remember that day and
the words of encouragement he spoke to me about
the sacred call to the priesthood. I was so
struck by the obvious love and joy he had for his
own vocation and his burning desire to serve God.
What a blessing and wonderful example for me as I
began my own priestly mission!
Little did I imagine that over three decades
later I would become actively involved with the
process of opening the Cause for canonization of
this great prelate and shortly thereafter be
named the Vice- Postulator of the Cause. During
this time, I worked closely with a group of
devoted lay individuals who, like myself, had a
great love for the Archbishop and felt called to
work towards his recognition as one of the saints
of the Catholic Church.
How grateful I felt when, on September 13, 2002,
the Most Reverend Daniel R. Jenky, C.S.C., Bishop
of Peoria, IL, petitioned the Sacred Congregation
for the Causes of Saints in Rome to open the
Cause of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, and what joy
I experienced when the very next day, the Sacred
Congregation announced that his Cause was
officially opened.
With Bishop Jenky and several lay faithful, the
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Foundation acts as the
official “promoter of the Cause.”
Working in cooperation with Bishop Jenky and
under his direction, the Foundation’s
objective is to promote public awareness of
Archbishop Sheen’s life while at the same
time raising funds to cover the various expenses
involved in promoting the Cause.
The reason I am writing you today is to ask you
to please remember the sainthood cause of your
Brother Knight, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, this
Christmas. We are moving along with his
canonization process but are in need of your
prayerful and financial support.
As you may well know, Archbishop Sheen was not
only someone who worked tirelessly for the
Missions of the world, for which he created the
World Mission Rosary, but he is also known as a
pro-life champion. He composed the Prayer
to Spiritually Adopt an Unborn Child,
which is being used today by millions of people.
The Archbishop was also an ardent lover of the
Holy Eucharist. On the day of his priestly
ordination, he made a promise to spend an hour of
continuous prayerful adoration in front of the
Blessed Sacrament, a promise that he kept until
the day he died. Archbishop Sheen was also a
patriot. He was a Fourth Degree member of the
Knights of Columbus, the patriotic arm of your
Order. In 1943 he wrote a prayer book entitled, The
Armor of God, now renamed the Wartime
Prayer Book, for our soldiers who were
fighting during World War II.
Archbishop Sheen certainly has many spiritual
facets connected to his person. For this reason,
we would like to keep the process of his
canonization moving steadily. But we cannot do it
without you. We believe that the Church and the
world need someone like Archbishop Sheen to
enlighten us about the times that we live in. We
firmly believe that, God- willing, once he is
proclaimed a saint, not only will there be a
growth in the number of vocations to the
priesthood, but there will also be more lay
people who will make a habit of praying the daily
Holy Hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament. More
people will think about all the sacrifices that
our missionaries are making for us overseas, and
the Prayer to Spiritually Adopt An Unborn
Baby will become even more widespread.
Even today, thousands of soldiers, both Catholic
and non-Catholic alike, are receiving consolation
from Archbishop Sheen’s words penned in the
little Wartime Prayer Book, which
our Foundation is making available to them free
of charge through our current fund-raising
campaign - the Wartime Prayer Book
Campaign Campaign.
[ http://www.WartimePrayerBook.org ]
Together with your Founder, Fr. Michael J.
McGivney, and the newest Knights of Columbus
saint, St. Rafael Guizar, may Archbishop Sheen
and all the saints in heaven bless our efforts to
promote God’s Kingdom here on earth and may
the Lord give each of us the grace to become
saints! May God bless you and your Council this
Christmas season and all through the New Year!
Yours in Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
Father Andrew Apostoli, C.F.R.
Vice-Postulator for the Cause of Canonization
of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
The Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Foundation
___________________________
email: info@archbishopsheencause.org
web: http://www.archbishopsheencause.org
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Another
Potential Saint from the Ranks of the Knights of
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