By Lindsay Steele
The Catholic Messenger
The latest Catholic Messenger Conversations podcast focuses on Venerable Fulton Sheen and the upcoming Catholic Messenger pilgrimage to his hometown of Peoria, Illinois.
The archbishop and TV evangelist, born in 1895, will be beatified later this year. Beatification is the step before sainthood, in which the first of two miracles needed for a sainthood cause has been approved by the Vatican.
During the podcast, recorded last month at KALA Studios in Davenport, Catholic Messenger Editor Dan Russo spoke about the future Blessed Sheen’s unique role in American culture. “If you can imagine a Catholic bishop in full garb on a network TV show during prime time — he used to compete against comedian Milton Berle who was pretty popular in the 1950s — he would beat (the comedian) in the ratings. All he had was a chalkboard, his red sash and his bishop’s garb, and he was able to just talk and bring people in.”
That kind of outreach and exposure, Russo believes, would be difficult to achieve today. “He got an audience of 20 to 30 million people per week. It’s hard for us to imagine that, because we have a fragmented media now.”
The July 24 pilgrimage will explore many of the places that would have been familiar to Archbishop Sheen during his formative years. “We want to spiritually enrich people by getting together and going to see the place where a (potential) saint grew up,” Russo explained.
The bus will leave from the St. Vincent Center in Davenport at 8 a.m. The trip includes a visit to the Fulton Sheen Museum and Gift Shop, lunch and a documentary showing, a tour of St. Mary’s Cathedral, Mass with Bishop Dennis Walsh at the tomb of Archbishop Sheen, and a scenic bus ride along Grand View Drive. The bus will return to Davenport around 5:30 p.m. Register at https://shorturl.at/ptIUG or call 563-323-9959.
The podcast ends with a clip of the archbishop speaking on the subject of prayer:
“Many look on prayer in somewhat the same fashion as an aviator may look on a parachute. He hopes that he will never have to use it, but it may come in handy in case he has to bail out. Prayer, as our blessed Lord talked about it and taught it, was something quite different…”
Listen to this and other Catholic Messenger Conversations podcasts at www.catholicmessenger.net/
podcasting or on your favorite podcasting app.
