Zac Johnson, Cofounder, Truthly · September 15, 2026
In 1952 the DuMont network gave Bishop Fulton Sheen the Tuesday night TV slot opposite Frank Sinatra and Milton Berle, two of the biggest stars of the age. The networks called it the obituary slot, because they thought no one could compete with those two — least of all a bishop with a chalkboard. DuMont had so little confidence in Sheen’s show that they classified it as a public service, paid him nothing, and handed out free tickets to priests to fill the theater.
Against all odds, Sheen’s show Life Is Worth Living drew as many as thirty million viewers a week. The network began receiving thousands of letters of fan mail. Sheen won an Emmy for Most Outstanding Personality and was nominated for two more.
Then the show stopped.
After years in the spotlight, Sheen found himself pushed to the margins, tested by conflict, disappointment, and obscurity. He kept making his daily holy hour, as he had every day for sixty years. On December 9, 1979, he was found dead in the one place he never failed to go: his chapel, before the Blessed Sacrament.
Now he’ll be beatified — the step before being declared a saint. The beatification Mass will be celebrated on Thursday, September 24, 2026, at The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, with Cardinal Luis Tagle presiding as the representative of Pope Leo XIV. Events in St. Louis and Peoria run from September 15 through September 26. Tickets and the full schedule are at celebratesheen.com.
The film
Truthly made an 18-minute documentary about Sheen’s life in partnership with the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Foundation, the official promoter of his cause for canonization.
The Celebrity Priest Who Couldn’t Be Bought
Truthly is building a Catholic AI app that has been downloaded by hundreds of thousands of people, and we produce films like this one, which received more than 300,000 views in three days. Fulton Sheen is part of the reason we do both. He used modern technology to meet the world exactly where it was. Every time a new door opened, he was already standing at it.