‘Lots of moving parts’ - The planning of Fulton Sheen’s beatification Mass

Bishop Louis Tylka talks logistics, funding, and 'Sheen Week'

The Vatican announced Wednesday that Archbishop Fulton Sheen will be beatified on Sept. 24, nearly seven years after the archbishop’s originally scheduled beatification was delayed.

Sheen’s canonization cause has been promoted by the Diocese of Peoria, where the late archbishop first served as a priest, and where his body is buried.

But, Bishop Louis Tylka of Peoria told The Pillar, there are no local venues large enough to hold the beatification Mass, which is expected to draw upwards of 70,000 pilgrims. As a result, The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis was chosen as a venue.

Tylka spoke with The Pillar about the logistics of planning a major event in only half-a-year, how the effort will be funded, and what the diocese has in mind for the “Sheen Week” leading up to the beatification Mass.

That interview is below. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Bishop Louis Tylka of Peoria. Credit: Diocese of Peoria.

Bishop, it’s been seven years since Sheen’s beatification was originally scheduled. And now you have just six months to prepare. What needs to be done, and have you started preparations?

There’s a lot that needs to be done. Hotels, and obviously we have arrangements to make with The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis. And we’re planning lots of events around the beatification here in Peoria, so [there are] lots of moving parts.

We have assembled a team here within the diocese, beginning with Monsignor [Jason] Gray, who is the executive director of the Sheen Foundation. He’s kind of the air traffic control, you might say. Our [foundation] COO, Royce Hood, is working alongside him.

We’ve had conversations for, I’d say, at least the last six months. When I began to feel that the beatification was going to be approved to move forward, I brought the folks together here within the diocese to quietly begin conversations. We had conversations about the location and began looking at what potential sites could be.

My feeling as the Bishop of Peoria, as the president of the Sheen Foundation, the promoter of the cause, knowing and having learned how significant his life was and how the breadth of his reach is literally worldwide, knowing that the interests would be so great, that’s where we began looking for venues within the diocese and beyond the diocese, just to contemplate if this could be a large event. Unfortunately, we don’t have a large enough facility within the diocese to celebrate this locally.

We’ve been quietly having those conversations and investigating for, I’d say, really the last four months. But as I said, all of our conversations were quite quiet and internal, because we knew we weren’t going to be able to do anything until we actually had official word that we would be able to move forward with the cause.

Are you consulting with other dioceses that have held recent beatifications, to draw on their experiences in planning and logistics for a large-scale event like this?

Not diocese to diocese, but more so the folks here in Peoria are reaching out to particular individuals to get their input.

And we’ve been blessed to have a number of folks reach out to us who have experience in planning large events -- folks with SEEK, NCYC, and the National Eucharistic Congress — offering to assist us as we ramp into high gear to plan an event where, God-willing, 75 or 80,000 people might join us.

What is the significance of September 24th? That’s a Thursday. Why was that date picked for the beatification?

Ultimately, the date is chosen by Rome. We did submit dates that were both during the week and weekend, and this is the one that Rome has chosen for us.

We were looking at: ‘how could we celebrate this in a timely fashion, giving us some time to prepare, but also not delaying?’

We looked at dates based upon the availability of the venue. We looked at dates close to significant events in Fulton’s own life. His priesthood ordination anniversary is September 20th, so it’s during the week that we would mark his priesthood anniversary. The date of September 24th also nicely coincides with the Feast of Our Lady of Mercy, and Sheen had a great devotion to the Blessed Mother.

And then in addition, a weekday provides perhaps more opportunity for bishops and priests to attend, rather than a weekend where they have obligations for their regular schedule of Masses.

So there were a lot of factors that went into it.

The Dome at America’s Center, St. Louis. Credit: Kirby Lee / Alamy.

Who is in charge of planning the liturgy? Does the Vatican give you guidelines, or do you make those decisions yourself?

Well, obviously there is a rite that we have to follow that takes place at the beginning of the Mass for Fulton Sheen to be declared “blessed” in the Church. And beyond that, it’s basically celebrating the Mass.

The planning is led by myself, Msgr. Gray, and Phil Lee, our director for the Office of Divine Worship.

The Vatican will have to have final approval of the liturgy plan that we have, and so we’ll have to send that off to them once everything is finalized. The texts that are used are the prayer texts that will be used going forward for celebrating Fulton Sheen’s feast day. That’s only going to be local initially, because he’s being declared blessed. A feast day doesn’t become universal until one is canonized a saint. So we’re waiting on approval for the texts that we’ve submitted, which would be the texts assigned for the feast as well as the texts that would go into the breviary.

But we are not starting from scratch. There was a liturgical plan in place in 2019 when the beatification was originally scheduled. So we basically picked up that plan of 2019, and we’re updating it, but there’s a good skeleton there for us to just tweak a few things.

Besides the Mass itself, what other events will be part of the beatification celebration?

Obviously the most important thing is the beatification Mass itself. But we want to create, if you want to call it, “Sheen Week,” where folks could have a pilgrimage, coming to Peoria to be able to visit the tomb.

The day after, we’re going to plan a series of Masses of Thanksgiving and a big gala event to celebrate. These events will be located in Peoria.

Leading up to the beatification, we are looking to have perhaps several holy hours, maybe a novena of holy hours that week before, where folks can come to the diocese and celebrate some time of prayer and preparation for the beatification.

So just a number of opportunities for folks to visit the Peoria area in order to visit the tomb and the museum as we ready ourselves to celebrate the beatification itself.

What do you anticipate the cost will be for all of this? And where does that money come from?

Well, we’re working on developing a budget for this, and the cost is going to be covered by donations. So we have a lot of fundraising to do between now and September 24th.

I anticipate that the cost overall is going to probably run into several million dollars. It’s one thing to rent The Dome, but then you have to run audio/visual equipment. You have to have security. There’s a lot of costs that go into the issues of hospitality etc. So we are well underway in reaching out to find partners who can help to sponsor this event. But in the end, it’s all going to come from fundraising efforts over the next six months.

There’s great cost to put on something like this, but it’s a rare experience and a rare opportunity for us to, in a very public way, show the life of the Church and proclaim our faith in the Lord and commit ourselves to the inspiration of the moment, to live that faith in the future. It’s an investment not for the moment, but for the legacy beyond this moment, which is living out our faith.

This is obviously a major event for the Church in America. And we now have our first American pope. Is there any chance Pope Leo will plan a visit to the U.S. for this beatification?

No, I don’t think so, if I’m very honest.

I would love for the Holy Father to come to visit the United States. I’m a fellow Chicagoan. I was born in the town that’s next to where he grew up. I can’t wait to meet him. I would love for him to be here, but I think that would add another level of complexity. And we have enough complexity in trying to plan this as it is.