Who is Fulton Sheen? The bishop who beat Lucille Ball to an Emmy was just declared 'blessed' in front of 50,000 people
Before televangelists and prestige TV, a bishop with a cape and a chalkboard went up against Milton Berle on Tuesday nights and took a chunk of his audience. Then he took an Emmy, with a joke about his writers people still repeat.
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen was declared "blessed" on Thursday, September 24, at a Mass at The Dome at America's Center in St. Louis, with about 50,000 people in the stands, the St. Louis Review reports. Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle read Pope Leo XIV's apostolic letter as papal delegate. Sheen is the first U.S.-born bishop to reach that step, one below sainthood. EWTN carried the Mass live.
The pope's letter praised Sheen as a preacher who used "the modern means of communication." In his homily, Tagle added that Sheen was not being beatified for being a radio and TV celebrity. The point needed making, because for most of the 1950s he was exactly that.
Uncle Miltie vs. Uncle Fultie
Life Is Worth Living premiered on the DuMont network on February 12, 1952, Tuesdays at 8 p.m., opposite Milton Berle's Texaco Star Theater, the show that had made Berle "Mr. Television." Sheen had no script and no cue cards, just a cape, a chalkboard and 28 minutes of talk, Time reported that spring. A year later he was up for the Emmy for Most Outstanding Personality against Lucille Ball, Jimmy Durante, Arthur Godfrey and Edward R. Murrow. He won, and thanked his staff:
"I feel it is time I pay tribute to my four writers — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John." — Fulton Sheen, accepting the Emmy
Berle took the ratings hit with grace. Both men, he joked, worked for the same boss, "Sky Chief Supreme," a nod to his Texaco sponsor. Sheen answered by opening a show as "Uncle Fultie."
The full broadcast résumé looks like this:
- The Catholic Hour, 1930–1950. Two decades on NBC radio, with about four million listeners a week by the end.
- Life Is Worth Living, 1952–1957. DuMont, then ABC. Sponsored by Admiral TV sets, carried on 169 stations, more than any other DuMont show.
- The chalkboard "angel." When the board filled up, Sheen asked an unseen "angel" to wipe it. A stagehand did, off camera.
- Time cover, April 14, 1952. Two months after his TV debut, he was on the magazine's cover.
Martin Sheen owes him a name
Born Ramón Estévez, the future star of Apocalypse Now and The West Wing built his stage name from CBS casting director Robert Dale Martin, who gave him an early break, and from Fulton Sheen. He has said he changed it because his Spanish surname kept costing him auditions.
Nearly fifty years before Jed Bartlet, the most famous Sheen on American television wore a cape.
The road to Thursday was not smooth. Sheen's beatification was first set for December 21, 2019, then postponed. The miracle the Vatican accepted is the recovery of James Fulton Engstrom, born without a pulse in 2010. His family presented Sheen's relic at the Mass. Sainthood would need a second verified miracle.
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