Archbishop Fulton Sheen was beatified in a Mass held in St. Louis, Missouri, moving the television-era preacher one formal step from official Catholic sainthood. The ceremony, marking him now as Blessed Fulton Sheen, has renewed attention to his decades of public warnings against communism at a moment when advocates argue those warnings still apply.
Sheen, who lived from 1895 to 1979, was ordained a priest in 1919 and spent 60 years in church roles, including a stint as Bishop of Rochester, New York. He became known first through a regular New York City radio program starting in the 1930s, then through primetime television in the 1950s, where his show Life Is Worth Living drew an estimated 30 million viewers weekly and won an Emmy Award — a broadcast run that made him the most successful televangelist in American history.
His public commentary went well beyond religious instruction. During the unrest of the 1960s, Sheen criticized what he saw as reflexive rejection of institutions, saying: “Our nation is too full with those who are crying ‘down.’ ‘Down with churches.’ ‘Down with the police.’ ‘Down with government.’ Can you build anything down? You cannot.”
On crime, he argued: “False compassion is a pity shown not to the family of the murdered, but to the murderer.” And on personal responsibility versus political posturing, he warned: “Sometimes we can cover our want of individual justice with social justice.”
A Lifelong Opponent of Communism
Sheen’s writing output was extensive — 73 books along with countless columns, articles and scripts. In 1943 he produced a free prayer book for American soldiers, dedicating it to “Mary, Mother Immaculate, gracious protectress of the United States,” and invoking victory over both Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.
Opposition to communism was a defining feature of his public career. According to biographer Thomas C. Reeves, Sheen wrote a detailed October 1936 article for The Tablet, a Brooklyn diocesan paper, documenting Soviet efforts to turn Spain into a communist state, drawing in part on the Russian press itself. A year later, Sheen cited casualty figures on atrocities against Catholics in Spain and criticized liberal intellectuals who backed the communist side.
In the 1940s, Sheen called Soviet Russia “the most anti-Christ nation on the face of the earth,” and described the preserved body of Lenin as “a rotted corpse… a perfect symbol of that to which all communism must lead us all, unto dust, unto dissolution, unto death.”
Why It Matters Now
Supporters of Sheen’s eventual canonization argue his anti-communist record makes him a fitting choice for patron saint of that cause, pointing to what they describe as a resurgence of communist and socialist influence in American cities including New York City and Seattle, as well as within parts of the Democratic Party.
They note other historical figures who opposed communism on different grounds — economists Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman on liberty and economic terms; Charles De Gaulle, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan on geopolitical terms; and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Pope John Paul II, the latter canonized a saint in 2014, on spiritual terms. Advocates for Sheen say a second saint focused specifically on the American fight against communism would still serve a purpose.
