Fulton Sheen told millions of television viewers America was becoming a civilization of death.
Now, after a six-year delay, the Catholic Church is finally declaring him Blessed and one step from sainthood.
The miracle that saved his cause traces back to a baby who had no pulse for over an hour.
The Baby Fulton Sheen Saved Had No Pulse for 61 Minutes
James Fulton Engstrom was born at home near Peoria, Illinois, in September 2010.
He came out silent, with no pulse and no breath.
Paramedics rushed him to OSF Saint Francis Medical Center and worked on him for 61 straight minutes.
Doctors were moments from declaring him stillborn.
His parents, Bonnie and Travis Engstrom, had already named their son after Fulton Sheen, a priest they'd loved for years.
So as their baby lay lifeless, they begged Sheen to intercede.
Sixty-one minutes in, with no natural explanation on the table, James's heart started beating.
Doctors told the family a baby with no pulse that long should suffer permanent brain damage.
James has none.
He's 15 now, a freshman in high school, and he's expected to carry Sheen's relic at the beatification Mass in St. Louis on September 24.
"He helps me in my life," James has said. "I pray to him and feel like he helps me."
The Vatican ruled there was no medical explanation for what happened to James, and that ruling is what clears Sheen for beatification.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen Warned America Abortion Would Create a Civilization of Death
Long before Roe v. Wade, Sheen was already telling Americans where this was headed.
"Once that philosophy is proclaimed that the ego is supreme, there are no limits," he said. "Then abortion follows."
He called it plainly: "We are becoming a civilization of death."
When the Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide, Sheen didn't blink.
"Legality is not morality," he said. "Because the Supreme Court makes something legal, it does not necessarily make it moral."
He warned that a culture willing to take life at its dawn would eventually take it anywhere.
"We're eventually going to come to midnight," he said, if a society keeps taking "life at dawn, life at noon, life at dusk."
Sheen didn't just preach against abortion.
He wrote a prayer asking God to spare specific babies from it, and he used his television pulpit on Life Is Worth Living to tell millions of Americans every single stage of life was worth protecting.
Pro-life author Maria Gallagher just released a book on Sheen's approach to joy, and it devotes a chapter to how he saw born and unborn children alike as sources of it.
That's not a coincidence.
People are still mining Sheen's old sermons for pro-life ammunition because he never stopped giving them material.
Cardinal Francis Spellman Tried to Bury Sheen Long Before Rome Did
Sheen already knew what it cost to cross the wrong man in a Roman collar.
Cardinal Francis Spellman ran the New York Archdiocese like his own kingdom, and Sheen refused to hand him control of mission money he believed belonged to the missions.
Spellman told New York seminarians that Sheen was "the most disobedient priest in the country," according to Sheen's own aide.
Sheen's national television show vanished soon after, and his sermons at St. Patrick's Cathedral stopped on Spellman's orders.
In 1966, Spellman shipped him off to lead the Diocese of Rochester, a demotion designed to end his rise in the Church for good.
Sheen kept preaching about the sanctity of life anyway, from whatever pulpit he had left.
The Fulton Sheen Beatification in St. Louis Was Delayed Six Years
Fifty-three years later, that same Rochester diocese asked Rome to pump the brakes on his beatification, days before the 2019 ceremony in Peoria.
Rochester raised questions about priest assignments Sheen made decades earlier while he was their bishop.
Peoria investigated and found nothing on Sheen.
Rochester itself said there was never any accusation of personal wrongdoing against him.
Six years is a long time to leave a prophet waiting in line for sainthood, in the same diocese Spellman once used to bury him.
This past February, the Vatican finally cleared him, and the beatification is back on for good.
James Fulton Engstrom's mother, Bonnie, said the family felt "a sense of relief" when the call finally came.
Meanwhile, a new generation is discovering the priest who saw all of this coming.
Young Catholics have been sharing old Sheen clips online, and Father Vincent Bernhard says what hooks them is that Sheen is "unapologetically Catholic" and "it all points to Jesus Christ."
He's been dead for nearly 50 years and he's still making converts.
Sheen said it plainly decades before it was safe to say it, while the cardinal who tried to end his career called him disobedient instead.
Spellman is remembered today as a footnote to Sheen's story, and the priest who wouldn't shut up about the unborn is the one getting the Vatican's highest honor short of sainthood itself.
A priest who told America the truth about abortion when it cost him something is about to be called Blessed, and a boy who shouldn't be alive is going to be the one who proves it.
Sources:
- Maria Gallagher, "Archbishop Fulton Sheen Was a Tireless Pro-Life Advocate," LifeNews.com, September 8, 2026.
- Joseph Pronechen, "15-Year-Old Sheen Miracle Recipient Who Was Saved as Baby: 'He Helps Me in My Life,'" National Catholic Register, February 16, 2026.
- Joseph Pronechen, "Ven. Fulton Sheen on the Clock of Life Approaching Midnight," National Catholic Register, September 1, 2019.
- Deborah Castellano Lubov and Robin Gomes, "Venerable Fulton Sheen to Be Beatified in St. Louis on 24 September," Vatican News, March 25, 2026.
- Gigi Duncan, "Beatified and 'Based': Why Gen Z Catholics Are Falling for Fulton Sheen," National Catholic Register, September 8, 2026.
- David Crary, "Rochester Diocese Request Led to Beatification Delay," The Associated Press, December 9, 2019.
- Matthew McDonald, "When Fulton Sheen Was Out of Season," National Catholic Register, February 12, 2026.
