Leo XIV, Fulton Sheen, and the Catholic American Heartland

Every American state boasts of its residents who have become famous. Illinois is no exception, and its list features American leaders of the highest level: Lincoln, Reagan, Sheen, and now Robert Prevost (Pope Leo XIV). Until the recent papal election, Ven. Sheen was probably the most-recognized American Catholic figure. But instead of seeing one man surpassed by another in the popular imagination, we should see the ascent of an American-born pope as a continuation of Sheen’s legacy in several ways. 

Two items on that list are unsurprising: engagement with the world for the proclamation of Christ, and personal devotion to Mary. Two other links between Sheen and the new pope are less obvious: their appreciation for the Catholic Eastern churches, and the pope’s election on Sheen’s birthday, May 8. A final question regarding the two churchmen from Illinois might be: Will Leo open the door to Sheen’s stalled path to beatification?

Sheen used his prodigious intellect, learning, and rhetorical skills to reach out to America and the world to preach Christ crucified. In his numerous books and his radio and television shows he taught people about many aspects of Faith—including the Mass, sacraments, and the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Lady he always praised.

Pope Leo’s first address to the world after his election was a message of peace—peace through Christ: “Peace be with you! It is the peace of the risen Christ.” The Augustinian friar borrowed his papal motto from St. Augustine: “In Illo Uno Unum” (“In the One, we are one”). Building on that call for a Christ-centered unity, Leo, in a meeting with Eastern Catholics, celebrated their perseverance as well as their devotion to liturgical excellence.

Leo’s appreciation for the Eastern churches, their contributions to the Universal Church, and their liturgical heritage was shared by Sheen. Sheen’s biographer Thomas C. Reeves, in America’s Bishop: The Life and Times of Fulton J. Sheen,gives a brief description of Sheen’s involvement in making the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom better known to a larger public. It occurred in 1956. “Sheen’s performance marked the first Pontifical Mass ever sung in English, and the first in the Byzantine Rite to be celebrated, with special Vatican permission, by a Latin Rite bishop” (248). It was even noted by The New York Times. (The curious can find a recording of Sheen commenting on another Byzantine liturgy here.)

In 2013, the year after I was received into the Catholic Church from Eastern Orthodoxy, my wife and I, on a road trip to Illinois to visit her family, paid a visit to the Sheen museum in Peoria. I was stunned to see, among the many fascinating artifacts, Sheen’s Eastern vestments. I felt affirmed in my decision to “swim the Tiber” and hopeful for better understanding between East and West.

Returning to 2025, commentators made much of the fact that Cardinal Prevost was elected to the papacy on the feasts of St. Michael the Archangel and Our Lady of Pompeii. As already noted, it was also the birthday of Ven. Fulton Sheen. What was not much-noticed is that May 8 on the Byzantine calendar is the Feast of St. John the Evangelist and Theologian. St. John is the theologian par excellence amongst the apostles. His other noteworthy attributes include being the apostle Jesus loved, the only one who stood by the Cross, the adopted son and protector of the Blessed Mother, and the teacher of Eastern saints such as Polycarp. In all those ways, he serves as a splendid role model for Pope Leo as well as a bridge between East and West.

Closer to home, might the Chicago pope smile favorably on the stalled process of his Illinois confrere’s beatification? Two obstacles to continuing the process of raising the great American prelate now seem to be bypassed. Pope Francis seemed to have scant love for the United States and its Catholics. We could expect Pope Leo, even after a number of years in Latin America, to not be reflexively anti-American. Also, the jurisdictional squabbles over a resting place for Sheen’s body are now settled. Pope Leo has already used English in some of his engagements, and we can hope he will, in addition to the language, present to a world skeptical of American influence and inclined to misunderstand Americans a son of America and embodiment of what is good in the American character. 

And what better role model from an earlier generation of American Catholics than Fulton Sheen? Sheen descended from Irish immigrants, whose story is well-known and often-told. Pope Leo’s ancestors recount the stories of other immigrant groups: Italian, French, Spanish, and Creole. The Eastern Catholics both Sheen and Leo lauded represent even another set of stories of ethnic groups maintaining the Faith in diversity and unity. It is the American story, but it is also the story of Catholics throughout the world.

Fulton Sheen did much to show that Catholicism was compatible with being from the United States. Pope Leo can build on that. As a nation, we can be justly proud of the saints who labored and died here: the North American Martyrs, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, St. Kateri Tekakwitha, St. John Neumann, and St. Katharine Drexel. We can see how immigrant groups brought their Eastern Catholic liturgies and customs here. It is now for us, the Church Militant, to realize that the Illinois prairies and “nature’s metropolis” (Chicago) have come into bloom.