The Fulton Sheen Story: What We Know, So Far, by Brian Fraga, Patheos blog (December 21, 2019)

The Vatican signed off on the miracle. The date for the Beatification Mass was set. People from across the country had made travel plans. Final preparations, including the installation of a new handicapped-accessible ramp, were underway at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception in Peoria, Illinois.

“The shock of this is so visceral,” said Rocco Palmo, the editor of Whispers in the Loggia who has done his own reporting on the Sheen story. As he also relayed on Twitter, Palmo told me that his Vatican sources have informed him that the Sheen cause is effectively dead. The Holy See never responded to his request for official comment.

The main reason for the delay – or possible termination, if Palmo’s sources are right – of Bishop Sheen’s beatification seems to be related to concerns that revelations could soon surface that Bishop Sheen might have mishandled cases of clergy sex abuse when he headed the Diocese of Rochester, New York from 1966 to 1969.

Some Church leaders fear those kind of allegations could come to light because the New York State Attorney General is coordinating a statewide probe into the Catholic Church’s past handling of clergy sex abuse. There are also concerns that Sheen’s name could surface in a lawsuit since New York has lifted its civil statute of limitation on child sex abuse cases.

“I thought everything had been thoroughly studied, so I saw no reason for the beatification to be delayed,” said Monsignor Gray, who described the postponement announcement as something “unexpected.” He also raised questions about what kind of “further consideration” the cause requires.

“I really don’t know what that further review could entail because every document that’s related to this has been brought forward and studied,” Monsignor Gray said. “I can’t even imagine what you would study further.”

Of course, the Sheen matter is further complicated by a healthy dose of internal Church politics combined with the usual opaqueness from senior Catholic bishops that one hoped against hope they would have jettisoned when the clergy sex abuse scandal first broke into the open in 2002. But almost 20 years later, even after the scandals of Theodore McCarrick and the 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report, some Church officials are still balking on transparency.

“I’m giving you the courtesy of a call back, but we are not making a comment,” Joseph Zwilling, the communications director for the Archdiocese of New York, told me when I reached out to him for a comment from Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York.

A spokeswoman for Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago also declined to comment when I reached out to her, telling me that what I was asking her about sounded to her like a rumor, “and we don’t comment on rumors,” she said.

I wasn’t reaching out to the cardinals in New York and Chicago based on Twitter hearsay, but from a source close to Sheen’s beatification cause who told me that Cardinals Dolan and Cupich were both copied on a letter that Bishop Salvatore Matano of Rochester, New York had sent to the papal nuncio in November objecting to the plan to move forward with the beatification. That detail, by the way, was subsequently confirmed in a lengthy op-ed written by Monsignor James Kruse, the vicar general of the Diocese of Peoria.

The same source who told me about Cardinals Dolan and Cupich being copied on that letter also said there were discussions between the two cardinals and Bishop Matano, who alone as a regular diocesan bishop would not have had the “pull” in the Vatican to delay Sheen’s beatification. Whatever thoughts and concerns were shared between them, the source said, were done so without the input of Bishop Jenky, who the source said was not included in those conversations.

“Aside from imparting a sense of gravity owing to its timing, the postponement was accompanied by no explanation,” Michael R. Heinlein wrote in Our Sunday Visitor shortly after the delay was announced.

Speculation ran rampant, especially on social media. A priest in my home diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, told me a New England bishop who had been the featured speaker at a local priests’ day of recollection told them, a few days after the postponement, that the second-or-third-hand information he heard was that the beatification was being delayed because of complaints pertaining to the 1,200-seat Peoria cathedral where the Mass was to be held.

Nature abhors a vacuum. And in this case, the anger and confusion over the Sheen delay was compounded by bishops who declined to give on-the-record explanations for their concerns.

“Such behavior rings uncomfortably and unfortunately familiar, further damaging the Church’s credibility in a time when leaders have struggled to be honest and transparent with the faithful amid the seemingly perpetual clergy sex abuse crisis and more,” Heinlein wrote.

“The Diocese of Rochester did its due diligence in this matter and believed that, while not casting suspicion, it was prudent that Archbishop Sheen’s cause receive further study and deliberation, while also acknowledging the competency of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to render its decision,” according to the diocese’s prepared statement.

In an interview he gave to a local newspaper, Monsignor Kruse said the Rochester documents pertained mostly to a priest, Father Gerald Guli, who served in Rochester in the early 1960s and was accused of sex abuse. Monsignor Kruse said both Rome and Peoria pored over the documents, and found no evidence that Sheen had improperly assigned him to a parish after abuse allegations were made.

In his-op ed, Monsignor Kruse said the Rochester documents also highlighted the case of a Father John Gormley, who reportedly sexually abused youths in 1969. Monsignor Kruse said the abuse was reported to Sheen before his retirement as the bishop of Rochester, and that Sheen “immediately” removed him from ministry and never gave him another assignment.

“Sheen was exonerated, so the Vatican said, ‘Go ahead with the beatification,’” Monsignor Kruse told the Peoria Journal Star.

“I do know officials in Peoria looked at all of that information very carefully,” Monsignor Gray told me. “I know it was examined in the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. I know it was also examined in the Secretary of State and the Vatican. Then sometime in the fall, everybody made the decision that there was really nothing that was objectionable.”

But when the beatification date was announced on Nov. 18, the Diocese of Rochester renewed its objections, and according to what a source told me, relayed those concerns to Cardinal Dolan, the metropolitan in New York, and Cardinal Cupich, the metropolitan in Illinois. In the letter he sent to the nuncio, Bishop Matano said it was “not advisable” to have the beatification.

“I can’t speak for what their motivations were,” Monsignor Gray said when I asked if he was surprised by Bishop Matano’s renewed objections. “I thought everything was handled, but apparently they felt very strongly, but I really can’t speak for them.”

I reached out to the Diocese of Rochester after the postponement was announced, and was told they would not be doing interviews. But according to Monsignor Kruse’s op-ed, the Rochester bishop’s letter was the latest example in a nearly year-long pattern of delay and obstruction that he described as deliberate acts of “sabotage.”

He claims Rochester withheld documents from Peoria for years after the cause for Sheen’s beatification was initially opened in 2002, and that those documents were not sent to Rome until after the Vatican, on July 6, approved the miracle for Sheen’s beatification and, out of public eye, set a tentative date of Sept. 20 for the Mass. That initial date was postponed when the Vatican received the documents from Rochester.

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, in a Dec. 4 report, mentioned a statement the Diocese of Rochester gave to the newspaper that referenced not just Father Guli, “but two or more accused priests whose handling during Sheen’s administration deserved more investigation.” Monsignor Kruse said that statement was symbolic of a pattern where “Sheen’s Cause takes a step forward and Rochester acts to block the cause.”

In a statement to the Associated Press, the Diocese of Rochester responded to Monsignor Kruse’s scathing op-ed and accusations of sabotage: “This is absolutely a false statement and lacks an appreciation for our diocese’s genuine concern for Archbishop Sheen’s cause.”

A Mess

So this is where we are; Catholic dioceses in two states sniping at each other through the media over one of the Catholic Church’s greatest evangelists and communicators of the 20th century.

“Fulton Sheen had the highest-rated television program through the 1950s into the early 1960s. He’s the man who arguably did more than any other person to bring American Catholics into the American mainstream after a century of prejudice and bigotry,” said Palmo from Whispers.

The current state of affairs between Peoria and Rochester vis-à-vis Sheen is remarkably more unseemly than the years-long legal battle between Peoria and the Archdiocese of New York over the final location of Sheen’s remains, a fight that was not settled until June.

All this is not exactly what Pope Francis meant when he told the faithful to “go make a mess” for the sake of evangelization, a cause that Bishop Sheen devoted his entire life to.

“He was a teacher, catechist, a Catholic presence par-excellence who was arguably most beloved Catholic churchman of the 20th century,” said Palmo, who added that the emotions over the Sheen matter are running high because he was such a prolific and high-profile figure that Catholics of a certain age thought of him as a part of the family.

“People felt like they knew Sheen,” Palmo said. “So anything that made this [beatification] at risk was bound to cause a firestorm.”

Indeed it has.