By PEGGY MOEN
Bishop Sheen: Mentor and Friend, by Msgr. Hilary C. Franco (New Hope, Ky.: 2014), 160 pp.; $19.95. To order, visit www.newhopepublications.org, or call 800-764-8444.
A year and a half ago, the Diocese of Peoria announced that the cause for Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s beatification had been suspended indefinitely, the sad consequence of conflict over moving his body from New York to his home diocese.
Archbishop Sheen, born in 1895 in El Paso, Ill., was ordained for the Diocese of Peoria in 1919. He served as an auxiliary bishop of New York from 1951 until 1966 when Pope Paul VI named him bishop of Rochester, N.Y. Sheen died in New York City in 1979.
His cause has yet to get underway again, but, in the meantime, Sheen supporters can buoy themselves by reading a book published in 2014, the same year his cause stalled. Bishop Sheen: Mentor and Friend, written by his assistant Msgr. Hilary C. Franco is, as the title suggests, a memoir rather than a biography.
A great fan of Sheen’s Life Is Worth Living television program, Franco as a young priest in the Bronx called Bishop Sheen’s Manhattan office to request an interview. In that August 1959 phone call, Franco told Sheen’s secretary, Edythe Brownett, that he wanted to ask the bishop some questions about his books.
To Franco’s surprise, Sheen granted the interview. The day after that interview, they met for lunch, and Sheen asked Franco — who is fluent in Latin and Italian — to assist him on a part-time basis.
In 1962, Bishop Sheen secured a full-time position for Franco: Francis Cardinal Spellman notified him that he would be assistant to Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, national director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith.
From there grew a friendship that lasted a lifetime and an association that took Franco around the world, to Thailand, Hong Kong, Brazil, and, most important, to the Second Vatican Council. Franco attended the council as a peritus.
Along the way, Fr. Franco met personalities ranging from Jackie Gleason, to Mother Teresa, to King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola of Belgium.
Franco writes about of Sheen’s well-known converts, such as Clare Boothe Luce and Heywood Broun. He also recounts stories of unknown ones. Onboard a flight back to New York after a mission trip to Thailand, says Franco, Bishop Sheen spoke with “an extraordinarily beautiful flight attendant — we called them stewardesses in those days.”
Sheen told the flight attendant that he and Franco had visited a leper settlement in Thailand, saying, “Oh, those sad and lonely people would give all to have a glimpse of your great beauty.”
She told Sheen she wasn’t Catholic, and although raised by Christian parents, she seldom went to church.
Bishop Sheen told her she was welcome to continue the conversation about the Catholic Church sometime in New York.
Before long, she came to Sheen’s residence and told him she wanted to take instructions in the Catholic faith. After her Baptism, she announced she was returning to Thailand to work as a volunteer in one of the leper settlements.
Some of Sheen’s friends and associates were neither famous nor beautiful. The book also tells about Victor, a cured victim of leprosy, who frequently joined Franco and Sheen for Friday night dinners at their residence.
Along with showing examples of Sheen’s hidden generosity, Franco reminds readers of his famous wit. When asked the names of his writers for Life Is Worth Living, Archbishop Sheen would respond: “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.”
Soon after Sheen began his at times ill-fated role as bishop of Rochester, N.Y., Franco was assigned to a parish in Mount Vernon, the Archdiocese of New York. Cardinal Spellman in 1967 informed him he had been appointed secretary at the Apostolic Delegation in Washington, D.C. Fr. Franco later served in Rome. He and Archbishop Sheen maintained their friendship through visits and correspondence.
Msgr. Franco was one of the celebrants at Archbishop Sheen’s funeral Mass on December 13, 1979, St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Of special interest to Wanderer readers is T. Patrick Monaghan’s interview with Msgr. Franco at the end of the book. There, Franco discusses Archbishop Sheen’s concerns about the rejection of clerical attire, the loss of reverence for the Eucharist, desertions from religious life, errors in catechesis, and weakness in the hierarchy.
I met Archbishop Sheen at the 1976 National Right to Life Convention in Boston. He was in a shop off the hotel lobby and I stopped and introduced myself. He seemed tired and not terribly well. That was about three years before he died. But when he addressed the NRLC, he came to life, electrifying the audience.
Perhaps his cause will regain life as well.
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