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The canonization cause of Archbishop Fulton Sheen has been suspended indefinitely, according to a statement issued Sept. 3 by the Diocese of Peoria, Ill., where the archbishop was born and ordained to the priesthood.
The suspension was announced "with immense sadness," the diocese said. "The process to verify a possible miracle attributed to Sheen had been going extremely well, and only awaited a vote of the cardinals and the approval of the Holy Father.”
The statement added that there was “every indication that a possible date for beatification in Peoria would have been scheduled for as early as the coming year."
Archbishop Sheen, a renowned charismatic preacher, gained fame in the 1950s with a prime-time television series called “Life Is Worth Living.” He also hosted a nighttime radio show, “The Catholic Hour,” for 20 years.
He was a former auxiliary bishop of the New York Archdiocese, who for 16 years served as the national director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in Manhattan and later headed the Diocese of Rochester. He died in 1979 in New York at age 84 and is buried in the crypt under the altar at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
The diocesan statement said the Archdiocese of New York denied a request from Bishop Daniel R. Jenky of Peoria, president of the Archbishop Sheen Foundation, to move the archbishop's body to Peoria. Deacon Greg Kendra, in a Sept. 3 posting on his blog The Deacon's Bench, said the reason for the request was for "official inspection and to take first-class relics from the remains."
A Sept. 4 statement from Joseph Zwilling, communications director for the New York Archdiocese, said Cardinal Dolan "did express a hesitance in exhuming the body" without a directive from the Vatican Congregation for Saints' Causes and family approval. The statement added that Archbishop Sheen's "closest surviving family members" asked that the archbishop's wishes be respected and that he had "expressly stated his desire that his remains be buried in New York."
Zwilling said Cardinal Dolan "does object to the dismemberment of the archbishop's body," but, were it to be exhumed, relics that might have been buried with Archbishop Sheen might be "reverently collected" and "shared generously" with the Peoria Diocese.
A subsequent statement Sept. 5 from the Peoria Diocese said it had received a statement June 27 from an attorney for the New York Archdiocese saying the archdiocese "would never allow the examination of the body, the securing of relics or the transfer of the body."
A 2005 request to transfer the body to Peoria received a response from the Vatican congregation not to move the body.
“To date, the only official instruction that the Archdiocese of New York has received from the Holy See regarding this matter was, from a decade ago, that his body not be moved to Peoria,” Zwilling said in his statement.
In an interview published Sept. 6 by Crux, the Boston Globe's Catholic news website, Cardinal Dolan said, "We've had some issues (with Peoria) over what to do with the remains of Archbishop Sheen and what relics we might be able to share, and I'm committed to doing whatever we can that's consistent with Sheen's own wishes, the wishes of his family, the instructions we get from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and New York state law."
If the Peoria Diocese's decision is final to suspend Archbishop Sheen's cause and to assign it to the Vatican congregation's historical archives, then "the Archdiocese of New York would welcome the opportunity to assume responsibility for the cause in an attempt to move it forward," Zwilling said.
Cardinal Dolan told Crux, "I guess my next step is to write a formal letter to Bishop Jenky and the congregation, saying we'd be honored to take over the cause if that's what seems best."
The basis for a possible miracle attributable to Archbishop Sheen came after Bonnie Engstrom delivered a stillborn baby in 2010. Her son James had no recorded heartbeat for 61 minutes after delivery.
As doctors were about to pronounce the child dead, James' heart started beating. He has defied doctors' predictions that he would not survive, or that he would have severe physical and developmental limitations.
In March, a seven-member team of medical experts convoked by the Vatican reported there is no natural explanation for the boy's survival.
-CNS
