Patheos blog
Dec. 21, 2019
By Brian Fraga
Fulton Sheen was supposed to have been beatified today.
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.
All that is now on hold, possibly for good.
“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.
“It’s just stunning,” Palmo said.
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.
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