Illinois bishop announces first-ever parish to be named after Blessed Fulton Sheen

Bishop Louis Tylka of the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, announced at the end of a Mass celebrated on Saturday the first-ever parish named for Blessed Fulton Sheen.

The combined parish of St. Mary in El Paso, Illinois — where Sheen was baptized — and St. John in Benson, Illinois, will be the first parish in the world to be named after the new blessed. While the buildings themselves will retain their original names, the new parish name will take effect on Dec. 9, Sheen’s feast day, Tylka said.

The Sept. 26 Mass — celebrated by Bishop John Barres of Rockville Centre, New York, who was baptized as a baby by Sheen — was one of many celebrated in thanksgiving for the beatification of Blessed Fulton Sheen, who was beatified Sept. 24 in St. Louis.

Tweet Sheen, despite his humble origins in small-town Illinois, aspired to great things as an academic and as a communicator of the Catholic faith. On Thursday, before a crowd of more than 50,000 at The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, the farm-boy-turned-mass-media star was declared “blessed” after the reading of a decree signed by Pope Leo XIV, a fellow Midwesterner.

Via his decree, Pope Leo announced Blessed Sheen’s feast day…