What can Fulton Sheen teach us about America?

As America continues to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we are exploring the people, objects, and ideas that have helped shape the promise of liberty.

What can Fulton Sheen teach us about America?

Long before central Illinois-born Sheen became one of America’s best-known Catholic voices, Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet traveled through the Illinois Country and explored the Mississippi River in 1673. Marquette was both a French explorer and a Catholic missionary, and his journey represents one of the early encounters among Indigenous nations, European exploration, and Christianity in Illinois.

Today, the Peoria Riverfront Museum preserves and displays Father Marquette’s stole, a remarkable object that connects us to this early chapter in the history of the Illinois Country, and to the many people, ideas, and traditions that would go on to shape America. The stole is on loan from the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Foundation.

FULTON J. SHEEN

Nearly three centuries late, another Catholic missionary raised in Illinois entered a new kind of frontier.

Fulton John Sheen was born Peter John Sheen in El Paso, Illinois, in 1895. Because he spent much of his childhood with his mother’s family, the Fultons, he eventually took their surname as his first name. His family moved to Peoria, Illinois, in 1900, seeking better educational opportunities, and he grew up there.

Sheen was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Peoria at the Cathedral of St. Mary in September 1919. The cathedral was familiar ground: he had served there as an altar boy. In 1930, he began broadcasting “The Catholic Hour” on the radio.

In 1952, Sheen brought “Life Is Worth Living” to television, then still a new presence in American homes. There were no elaborate sets, only Sheen, a chalkboard and a compelling message. Yet millions watched. He competed successfully against some of America’s biggest entertainers and won the 1952 Emmy for Most Outstanding Television Personality. Accepting the award, he thanked his four “writers”: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Sheen used broadcasting to discuss faith, freedom, human dignity and the defining ideological struggle of his time: communism.

He believed communism was more than an economic system. In his view, by denying God, reducing people to economic units and making the state the final authority, it reversed the proper relationship between individuals and government. For Sheen, the fundamental question was “whether man shall exist for the state, or the state for man.”

On September 24, 2026, Fulton Sheen was beatified by the Catholic Church. Beatification formally recognizes that a person lived a life of heroic Christian virtue and may be honored as “Blessed.” It is an important step toward sainthood, but it is not canonization.

His beatification continues a remarkable Illinois story. Father Marquette carried his faith through the Illinois Country. Sheen carried that faith into millions of American homes. Another son of Illinois, Ronald Reagan, later helped confront the Soviet system Sheen had warned against. Today, Sheen moves closer to sainthood during the papacy of Leo XIV, a Chicago native and the first American pope.

From Father Marquette’s stole to Fulton Sheen’s television broadcasts, these stories remind us that faith has always been part of the American story. The separation of church and state protects faith from government control; it does not require Americans to separate their faith from their voices, their work, or their participation in the life of the nation.

Freedom of conscience is part of the promise America made 250 years ago – and one each generation must choose to preserve.

The Promise of Liberty is sponsored by the Gilmore Foundation, Ashley and Josh Bellamy, McKinnon Family Foundation, America 250 Donors, Visionary Society, Friends of History.