EXCLUSIVE: Fulton Sheen’s Hometown Bishop Reveals Why His Path To Sainthood Especially Matters Now

Bishop Louis Tylka of Peoria, Illinois reflected on Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen’s scheduled September beatification and what it means for the Catholic Church in an exclusive interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Vatican approved Sheen’s beatification — the step that immediately precedes sainthood — in February, and the ceremony is set to take place on Sept. 24 in St. Louis, Missouri. Tylka, who presides over the diocese in which Sheen was born, raised and ordained to the priesthood, shared how the pioneering the Emmy-winning televangelist and his “timeless” ability to share the Gospel is still resonating with people more than 46 years after his death in 1969.

“Sheen’s ability to communicate is timeless, just like the Gospel is timeless, because what he was teaching and what he was saying is all rooted in the relationship he had with the Lord and in the Gospel that he committed himself to preach and to live out each and every day as a Catholic,” Tylka told the DCNF.

The Archbishop’s successful TV show “Life Is Worth Living” ran from 1952 to 1957 and garnered an estimated 30 million weekly viewers at its height, according to the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Foundation. Sheen’s positio —  a comprehensive document arguing his case for sainthood to the Vatican — credits him with the conversion of more than 42,000 people to the Catholic faith, Our Sunday Visitor News reported.

“And so I think, as we introduce new generations of people into what his life and legacy was all about, what people are discovering is that he was simply effective,” Tylka continued. “Because you knew when you saw him, when you heard him speak, when you saw him on TV, or especially if you encountered him in person, you knew this was a man who was living off his faith, witness his faith, because it was the core of who he was: starting his day with prayer, committing himself to be close to the Lord in the Eucharist, his devotion to the Blessed Mother and his desire to bring all people to an encounter with Christ.”

‘Authentic Christian Witness’

Given the recent uptick in conversions to Catholicism among Generation Z Americans — particularly young men — Tylka said he thinks Sheen’s life especially attractive to young people in 2026 as it “was so authentic and genuine.”

“I think younger generations, we look at the world, and we see people in all different parts of society that are inauthentic and calling us to values that are not, you know, that are worldly values versus the timeless values and the eternal values of the Gospel,” the Peoria bishop told the DCNF. “And Sheen is a great example of somebody who says, ‘No, I’m going to live an authentic Christian witness life rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I’m going to do that with clarity and conviction and with compassion and with love.’ And that witness is attractive to anybody.”

Sheen’s show aired amid a changing American political and cultural landscape, coinciding with rapid post-World War II growth and the Cold War’s onset. The archbishop was a vehement opponent of communism, denouncing the destructive ideology as “the final logic of the dehumanization of man,” adding that it “deny[s] God” and “reduces man to a robot,” in his 1948 book “Communism and the Conscience of the West.”

The DCNF asked Tylka what Sheen’s impending beatification means as socialism and communism ascend in popularity among American youth and when the current mayor of New York City — where the archbishop had lived for 25 years — openly identifies as a socialist.