Community story
Fifty thousand people came to the Dome on Thursday for the first beatification ever held in St. Louis. Volunteers around the country had made a rosary for every one of them.
Downtown St. Louis — Thursday, September 24, 2026
On Thursday afternoon about 50,000 people filled the Dome at America’s Center to see Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen declared Blessed. They came from nearly every state and from as far away as Italy, Poland and Brazil. It was the first beatification ever celebrated in the Archdiocese of St. Louis, and it landed in the same year the archdiocese turns 200.
Sheen was born in 1895 in El Paso, Illinois, a small farm town in the middle of the state. He became the most famous priest in America and never really stopped sounding like where he came from. His radio program, The Catholic Hour, started in 1930 and drew four million listeners a week. His television show, Life Is Worth Living, won him an Emmy in 1952 and reached as many as 30 million people a week, most of them not Catholic. He stood at a blackboard, told stories, and signed off every episode with three words: God love you.
He knew St. Louis well. The archdiocese counts about 20 visits over his lifetime, and in 1953 he led an exhibition here that drew 270,000 people. “We like to think of Venerable Archbishop Sheen as a son of the Midwest,” Eric Fair, the archdiocese’s director of archives, said this spring.
The Diocese of Peoria, which led Sheen’s cause, picked St. Louis because it was close to his hometown and had a building big enough for the crowd. The Dome is the same place Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass in January 1999. For Thursday it was lit in blue, and a replica of Sheen’s old television set was built on the floor.
Missourians bought 10,000 of the tickets. Nearly 90 bishops, about 1,000 priests, some 1,600 religious sisters and brothers and almost 250 deacons processed in while choirs and an orchestra played. Readings and prayers were offered in Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, French, Tagalog and Vietnamese. And every person who walked through the door was handed a rosary that somebody, somewhere, had made by hand.
That last part is the detail worth stopping on. Sheen designed the World Mission Rosary in 1951, with five colors for the five continents. To honor it, the Pontifical Mission Societies asked volunteers around the country to make 75,000 of them for the beatification. Parish rosary groups, cloistered nuns and retirees answered. The Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in Clyde, Missouri, up in Nodaway County, signed up for 500. A parish group in Kentucky promised 1,000. A ministry in Minnesota took on 10,000. Fifty thousand hands, strung one bead at a time.
In 2010, James Fulton Engstrom was born at home outside Peoria without a heartbeat. His parents prayed to Sheen while the medical team worked on him. After 61 minutes his heart started, and he grew up healthy. The Vatican certified his recovery as the miracle that made Thursday possible. On Thursday, James, now 16, walked into the Dome with his parents and his brothers and sisters, carrying Sheen’s relic to the altar.
Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, sent by Pope Leo XIV, read the declaration. Bishop Louis Tylka of Peoria wore Sheen’s own pectoral cross. Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski of St. Louis was the host.
The city expected about $22 million in visitor spending from the week. Michael Johnson, who owns Sugarfire Smoke House downtown, put it more plainly: “Wednesday night, we got a line to the door. And that’s just not normal.”
Germaine and John Braxton drove three hours from Owensboro, Kentucky. Charles McFarland came down from Chicago. “It’s extraordinary to be a part of this,” he said. Diane Heckley, from Bloomington, Indiana, remembered watching Sheen on television. And Ellie Fontana, from Nashville, said the thing Sheen would probably have liked best: “He’s just very relatable to my generation now, and that means everything.”
By Thursday evening the pilgrims were on their way back to nearly every state in the country. What they carried out was small: a five-colored rosary somebody had strung by hand, and the memory of hearing a farm boy from Illinois called Blessed. Sheen spent his life telling people that theirs was worth living. On Thursday, in St. Louis, the Church said the same thing about his.
God love you, St. Louis.
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