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La Salle, Bureau Co. pilgrims headed to Sheen beatification · Illinois Valley - Shaw Local

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  La Salle Bureau Company Pilgrims headed to Sheen Beatification. Written by Tom
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  Collins. This article is being read by an automated voice, brought to
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  you by Everlit. An Illinois native is about to be the fifth
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  person beatified on U.S. Soil. Pilgrims from LaSalle and Bureau counties will
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  flock Thursday into St. Louis to honor Fulton J. Sheen. The
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  Reverend Nicholas Wilson, parochial vicar at Saint Brigid Parish in Ottawa, and
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  chaplain at Marquette High School.
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  Said four buses were procured for Ottawa pilgrims alone. They parish buses
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  filled up quickly, Wilson said, and we decided to take the juniors
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  and seniors from Marquette High School. Them, students are always up for
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  an adventure, and I think they really appreciate the historic nature of
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  this occasion, he said. Sheen really makes holiness much more personal and
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  real to them, particularly because he's from our diocese. A native of
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  El Paso, and ordained a priest in the Diocese of Peoria, Fulton
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  J. Sheen, eighteen ninety five to nineteen seventy nine has been inching
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  toward sainthood since the Diocese opened his cause in two thousand two.
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  Sheen was a household name in the 1950s when He
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  hosted Life is Worth Living on television from 1952 to 1957. The
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  program was a hit, and Sheen became, arguably, America's first televangelist. He
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  left behind a large collection of writings and a reputation for personal
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  holiness that only grew with time. He is not yet a saint.
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  Canonization requires two miracles attributed to a deceased person's intercession, subject to
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  Vatican approval. One such miracle is in the books. In 2010, a
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  baby named James Fulton Engstrom of Goodfield, near Peoria, was revived sixty
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  one minutes after stillbirth and crucially after intercessory prayers to Sheen’s The
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  Vatican later declared it a miracle and set the stage for beatification,
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  the next to last step before sainthood. Sheen's cause was advanced earlier
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  this year when Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV, a longtime admirer of Sheen's,
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  approved beatification. September 24 was selected because it's near the anniversary
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  of Sheen's ordainment on September 20, 1919. The home at America's Center
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  in St. Louis was selected because Peoria has no venue large enough
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  to accommodate the expected visitors from the USA and abroad. Beatification was
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  once done in Vatican City. But the Holy See relaxed that rule
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  and began allowing blessed men and women to be beatified in their
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  home countries. In 2014, Blessed Teresa Demjanovich became the first to be
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  beatified in the United States, Newark, New Jersey. She was followed in
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  2017 by Solanus Casey, Detroit and Stanley Rother, Oklahoma City. Michael McGivney,
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  founder of the Knights of Columbus, was beatified in 2020 in Hartford,
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  Connecticut. Sheen will join this ultra exclusive club and will be the
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  first U.S. Bishop to be beatified. If he's canonized, he would be
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  the first Illinois born saint. Francis Xavier Cabrini, the first American saint,
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  died in Chicago but was born in present-day Italy.