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Fulton Sheen Is Being Beatified: The Miracle, the Delay & What It Means · The Catholic Couple

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: There was a baby born without a heartbeat.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Doctors worked on him.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Five minutes passed.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Then it was 10.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Then it was 20, then 30.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: And still there was no heartbeat.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, 61 minutes had passed by.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: And during those 61 minutes, his parents were doing something very specific.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: They were asking for the intercession of one man, Fulton J.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Sheen.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And what happened next would eventually become part of the reason why on September 24th, 2026, the Catholic Church will officially beatify one of the greatest Catholic communicators America has ever produced.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: But there's another part of the story that I don't think a lot of Catholics understand or haven't heard.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Fulton Sheen isn't becoming a saint on September 24th.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: He's becoming blessed Fulton J.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Sheen.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, what's the difference between a servant of God, a venerable, a blessed, and a saint?
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And why did the church spend years investigating this miracle?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: And why was Sheen supposed to be beatified all the way back in 2019?
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then just days beforehand, everything suddenly stopped.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe most importantly, why should any of this matter to you?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because I don't think Fulton J.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Sheen's beatification is simply the church looking backwards at some great Catholic television personality.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think his life has something to say to Catholics trying to evangelize the world right now.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: So let's start with the miracle first.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Fulton J.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Sheen died in the year 1979, but decades later, a family in Illinois would begin asking for his prayers in one of the most desperate moments any parent could ever imagine.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Bonnie and Travis Engstrom were expecting their son James Fulton Sheen Engstrom.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And during a home birth in 2010, serious complications occurred.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: James was born showing no sign of life.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: There was no heartbeat, there was no breathing.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Resuscitation began, and he was rushed to the hospital immediately.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And while the doctors were fighting for their son's life, Bonnie and Travis began praying.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Not simply, God please save our baby, which they were doing that as well, but they also specifically invoked Fulton Sheen.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Fulton Sheen, pray for him again and again and again.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Keep asking for him to intercede.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then approximately 61 minutes later, with no heartbeat, his heart began beating once again.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: 61 minutes.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: But the story wasn't over yet, because surviving something like that is one thing, right?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: But the question was, what kind of condition would this child be in if he did survive without getting oxygen to his brain?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: The concern was severe neurological injury.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And yet James continued recovering.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: That recovery became the subject of an investigation by the Catholic Church.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And this is something that people sometimes misunderstand about Catholics when we talk about miracles.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: The church doesn't simply just hear an amazing story and say, well, that settles it.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds miraculous.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just go ahead and declare it a miracle.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: The case was investigated.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Medical records were examined, doctors and experts, and many other people were consulted.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then theologians started to examine whether or not the healing can be reasonably attributed to the intercession that had been claimed.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, the church formally recognized that the healing was attributed to Fulton J.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Sheen's intercession.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that brings us to something that I had realized a lot of Catholics don't actually understand.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: How does somebody become a saint?
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: We throw these words around servant of God, he was venerable, we have blessed, and then we have the designation of saint.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: So what do they mean?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Think of them almost as stages.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: First comes servant of God.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: That means that a person's cause for canonization has formally begun and their life is being investigated.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: The church starts examining all their writings, their life, their reputation, anything that has to do with their holiness, witnesses, anybody that knew them, they start to investigate.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Then comes venerable.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where Fulton Sheen has been for many years.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: We've always called him Venerable Fulton Sheen.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: And venerable means that the church has recognized that this person lived a life of heroic virtue.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Notice what it does not mean.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean he was famous.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that he was a saint, right?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't say that he was even a brilliant theologian.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that, you know, he he had this popular television show.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: It means that the church looked at this person's Christian life and recognized his heroic virtue.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's enormous.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Then comes blessed.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: For a non-martyr, ordinarily there must be attributed a miracle to that person's intercession.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where James Ekstrom's story enters into this picture.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Beatification means that the church has publicly venerated the person as blessed along the norms of the Catholic Church.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next stage would be canonization.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: That would be being a saint.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And ordinarily, another miracle occurring after beatification is investigated and approved.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: So on September 24th, Fulton Sheen isn't crossing some imaginary finish line where Catholics finally decide that all of a sudden he was a good person.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: This has been a process that's been lasting for decades, and his life has been examined, his heroic virtue has been recognized, and a miracle attributed to his intercession has been examined and approved by the church.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: So now the church will formally declare Blessed Fulton J.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Sheen.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: But here's where the story gets even stranger.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because this was all supposed to happen years ago.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: The beatification that never happened.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: In 2019, Catholics thought this moment had finally arrived.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Fulton Sheen's beatification was scheduled.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was ready to go forward.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: People were making all the plans, all the different preparations were underway.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, just days before the ceremony, it was postponed.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine that.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: After decades of work on his cause, after that miracle had been recognized, that the church said it was recognized.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And after they even announced his beatification, everything stopped cold in his tracks.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: And for years, people are wondering, will Fulton Sheen ever actually be beatified?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that delay makes September 24th, 2026, even more remarkable.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Seven years after the postponed ceremony, Catholics will gather in St.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Louis as Fulton Sheen is finally going to be declared blessed.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we will be there in the stadium to watch this Mass and talk about Fulton Sheen and meet with other people and go to conferences and just celebrate the triumphal life that Fulton Sheen and the inspiration and the intercession that he's had for people all throughout the ages, especially here in America on his 250th anniversary, on his way to be an American saint.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And there's something almost Sheen-like about that, right?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because this was a man who constantly preached about the cross.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: He talked about suffering.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: He talked about waiting.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he also talked about surrendering to God's providence.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And even his cause for beatification had to pass through its own waiting period.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think the timing is perfect because we know God's timing is perfect.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: It is no accident that it is on America's 250th year.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the part that interests me the most.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Why Fulton Sheen?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Why now?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: He understood the media before almost anyone else did.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're younger and you've only seen the black and white Fulton Sheen clips on Instagram or YouTube, it's difficult to understand how much of an impact and enormous reach that he had.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: This Catholic bishop walked onto American television wearing a cassock and a cape, and he stood in front of a chalkboard always marked with JMJ at the top, but he didn't talk about politics or things going on in the culture.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: He talked mostly about God and morality and psychology and communism, marriage, suffering, sin, and of course, all focused on Jesus Christ.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And millions of Americans watched each week.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Think about how crazy that is.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't have some flashy sets or some kind of gimmicks.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't have any kind of jump cuts or viral audio.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't trying to do clickbait with his thumbnails.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was just him, a chalkboard, and an incredible preparation and skill and conviction.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, I don't think Sheen's greatest lesson for Catholic creators is just learn how to communicate like Fulton Sheen.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a lot deeper than that.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because before he turned on the cameras, before he wrote his 66 books, before the many talks and retreats that he gave, and definitely before the television audience, there was always his holy hour.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Sheen had made a commitment to spending an hour before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, day after day, year after year, without fail.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that's the part of Sheen's life that we desperately need right now.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: I know before every time I get behind this mic, I spend time in prayer, mostly daily mass, the rosary, divine mercy, contemptative prayer, spending time in scripture before I even turn on the camera or put anything out on social media.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's the number one lesson that I have took from Fulton and Sheen.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because we live in the greatest communication age that human beings have ever experienced.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And everybody has a microphone, everybody has a camera, and everybody has an iPhone, and everybody has their own opinion, which basically gives everybody a platform.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: But Sheen understood something.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: He knew that your public fruit cannot outrun your private prayer.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that's pretty convicting to me personally because I make a lot of Catholic content.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to be constantly be reminded that it's not about me, that it is about Jesus.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: I know I have the microphones and I got the camera, I do a podcast, I got, you know, followers on Instagram and YouTube, you know, thanks be to God.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I also have an upcoming book, Guardians and Prophets, all of it.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: But it's very easy to confuse talking about Jesus with actually spending time with Jesus.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Those things are not the same.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Fulton Sheen understood that power wasn't coming from the television studio or any kind of medium.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: The power, it was coming from the tabernacle.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why his beatification matters.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: This simply cannot become, wow, Fulton Sheen was an amazing guy.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's just admiration.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Christianity calls us to imitation.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, maybe you'll never preach to millions.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you'll never write a book.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you probably won't ever have a podcast.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe nobody outside your family even knows your name.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the point.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: The question isn't, can I become Fulton Sheen?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: The question is, can I pursue holiness where God has placed me in my own life?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Can I give God my time when nobody sees it?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Can I make prayer a priority in my life?
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Can I bring Christ into my home?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Can I speak truth without losing charity?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And can I suffer without wasting it?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And can I use whatever influence God has given me, whether that's five people or five million, to lead other people closer to Jesus?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: I love the definition of a disciple from Father Mike who says that a disciple is somebody who's willing to change their schedule to get closer to God.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm trying to be a digital missionary disciple.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: A digital missional disciple is somebody who uses their platform online and gives up their time to help other people get closer to Jesus.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's the lesson.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because sainthood isn't about celebrity Catholicism.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just reserved for bishops or famous people either.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just for the religious nuns and bishops.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just reserved for people whose faces are on holy cards.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is the universal call to holiness, which means that each and every one of us have been created to be set apart for God, to be holy too.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's the most important thing to understand about this beatification.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: When the church raises someone up for us to imitate, she isn't simply saying, look how extraordinary that person was.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: The church is reminding us, look what grace can do with the human life.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why Fulton Sheen still matters.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: September 24th, on Thursday in 2026, Catholics will gather in St.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Louis for his beatification after decades of investigation, after this miraculous healing, after it was postponed for years, and a lot of waiting and a lot of praying, Venerable Fulton J.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Sheen will become blessed Fulton J.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Sheen.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't think Sheen would want any of us spending very long staring at him.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: Everything in his life pointed towards Christ.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Everything was pointing towards the Eucharist, pointing towards the cross and ultimately eternity.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps one of the greatest ways to celebrate his beatification isn't simply watching the ceremony or sharing one of his quotes, which I plan on doing, but maybe it's doing what he actually did.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Going to sit before Jesus, taking that time, if he can't do a holy hour in front of the tabernacle, maybe just doing five minutes today and building on it to see where you can go.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's just adding one extra mass per week.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's just spending 10-15 minutes in scripture every day and putting your phone down.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's just giving God what you can give him.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe starting your day with telling him how much you love them and that you want to be the kind of person who can donate an hour a day to be with you.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: That I can prioritarize my day to do it.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're not there yet, that's okay.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because nobody starts at the finish line.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Fulton Sheen lived a long life, but it was built on trial and error and perseverance and suffering.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: And he went through many trials.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we hear about those in his recent release from Mike Catholic Library, his autobiography, Treasure in Clay, this is from Mike Catholic Library, highly recommended.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'll put a code for 10% off if you're interested in getting it.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's a beautiful subscription service.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: But this autobiography shares so much of his life, and it was filled with setbacks and trial and crosses and things that didn't go his way.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: But if anything that he taught us is that you still have to keep getting up, even when you don't feel like it, to give that hour.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because he understood that our incredibly noisy world, we need to discover silence.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: And before anybody else can speak Christ into the world, we have to spend time with Christ in silence.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe the next great Catholic evangelist doesn't need a bigger platform.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe he just needs a deeper prayer life.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I know I do.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: But maybe she needs another hour from you in front of the Blessed Sacrament, praying for the intentions of the church and those around you.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe renewal that we've been waiting for isn't gonna happen on YouTube or TV or even on Instagram.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it begins where Sheen did.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: On our knees.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Fulton Jay Sheen, soon to be blessed Fulton J.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Sheen, pray for us.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: If you like this content, I would appreciate it.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: You hit that like, share, subscribe button so we can share all about Fulton Sheen.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you're gonna be in St.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Louis for this beatification, make sure you message me on Instagram.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to meet you guys.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be all around Wednesday.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be at the conference from Fulton Sheen movement, the Fulton Sheen Conference.com.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: There is going to be all kinds of speakers, Arthur Brooks and Tammy Peterson, and many others.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: You can also watch online, EWTN, Relevant Radio.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: We're all going to have coverage of Fulton Sheen.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're going to be there, message me.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to meet you.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to pray with you.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to swap Fulton Sheen stories because he's been such an important part in my conversion.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: I've read his books and it's literally helped change my life.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: I can't wait to read his next one.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't wait for him to be blessed, Fulton J.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Sheen.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: God bless you and have a beautiful day.