Stories

In Part 7 of this series on the life and legacy of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, which appeared in the last issue of MISSION magazine, we explored Archbishop Sheen’s participation in the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), with particular attention to his influence on the Council’s vision of the Church’s missionary responsibility and its call to renew the evangelizing mission of the faithful worldwide. We now turn to the next chapter in Sheen’s remarkable career: his years as Bishop of Rochester (1966-69), where the practical realities of post conciliar leadership brought both opportunity and challenge.

In October 1966, Pope (now Saint) Paul VI appointed Fulton J. Sheen the sixth Bishop of Rochester, New York. With this appointment, Sheen stepped away from the leadership of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, an office he had directed for sixteen years with remarkable success. According to Thomas C. Reeves in America’s Bishop: The Life and Times of Fulton J. Sheen (2001), Sheen oversaw the raising of more than $200 million for the missions during his tenure. Much of this support came through the annual World Mission Sunday collection, which his national prominence helped promote in parishes across the country but also throughout the rest of the year with donations sent often to the national office. In 1950, contributions totaled approximately $3.5 million per year; by 1965, that figure had grown to $16 million annually (roughly $163 million in today’s dollars). In that same year, Catholics in the United States were providing nearly 60 percent of the Church’s worldwide missionary funding.

On December 11, 1965, Sheen preached for the final time at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, delivering a sermon that lasted twenty-four minutes. Present in the sanctuary were Cardinal Spellman, several auxiliary bishops, a phalanx of priests, and nearly 3,000 worshippers filling the vast cathedral (which today is popularly known as “America’s Parish Church”). The moment carried a quiet historical weight: for three decades Sheen had mounted that pulpit to preach to packed congregations, his voice and presence holding audiences spellbound, his words reverberating far beyond the cathedral walls. 

When Sheen arrived in western New York State to begin his new responsibilities, he encountered a diocese spanning twelve counties and serving approximately 450,000 Catholics (about 36 percent of the general population), along with nearly 600 priests. Although this marked the beginning of his formal leadership of the diocese, Sheen was no stranger to Rochester. He had visited the city on several earlier occasions to preach and deliver lectures, with his first appearance dating back to 1929.  He succeeded Bishop Edward Kearney, who, at eighty-two years of age, was retiring after nearly three decades of episcopal leadership in Rochester. At the time of his appointment, Sheen expressed genuine enthusiasm about helping to implement the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in his new diocese, seeing the moment as an opportunity for spiritual renewal, pastoral adaptation, and a deepening of the Church’s missionary and evangelical spirit at the local level.

The mid-1960s were years of profound change for both the Catholic Church and American society more broadly. The Second Vatican Council, which met from 1962 to 1965, had concluded only months before Sheen’s appointment to Rochester. The Council ushered in renewed emphasis on the liturgy, the role of the laity, ecumenism, and the Church’s relationship with the modern world. For Sheen in particular, one of the most important themes of the Council was its renewed understanding of the Church as missionary by her very nature. Having spent sixteen years leading the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, he brought to the Council a deep concern for evangelization and for the Church’s responsibility to proclaim Christ beyond traditional Catholic strongholds. In addition, he warmly embraced the Council’s call for aggiornamento, seeing it not as accommodation to the world but as a revitalization of the Church’s evangelical mandate. Sheen later spoke of his time at the Council as a profound grace, especially in light of its call to renew the Church’s missionary spirit in every local diocese.

Sheen arrived in Rochester at a moment of significant change, if not outright upheaval. A growing number of black and Hispanic residents were making their homes in the city and throughout Monroe County, reshaping the social, cultural, and pastoral landscape of the diocese. Only two years before his arrival, racial unrest in the summer of 1964, centered in predominantly black neighborhoods of Rochester, had erupted into violence. The governor deployed National Guard troops. Four people were killed, hundreds were injured, more than 750 were arrested, and property damage ran into the millions of dollars. While the immediate spark was accusations of police brutality, the deeper tensions that fueled the uprising had been building for years, rooted in poverty, discrimination, and limited economic opportunity.

At the same time, the wider American context was marked by accelerating social transformation. The civil rights movement, growing awareness of urban poverty, and intensifying debate over the war in Vietnam were reshaping the nation’s moral and cultural landscape. For any diocesan bishop in these years, the task was formidable: to remain firmly grounded in the Church’s enduring teaching while also responding pastorally and intelligently to rapidly changing social realities. It was into this complex moment, both ecclesial and civic, that Bishop Sheen began his ministry in Rochester.

Sheen entered his new ministry with characteristic energy. On Christmas Day, less than two weeks after his installation, he celebrated three Masses: one at the cathedral, another in a parish, and a third in the city jail, a gesture that signaled his desire to reach Catholics in every circumstance of life. He also invited his predecessor to continue living in the bishop’s residence, while he himself chose to move into a simple apartment attached to the diocesan headquarters so that he could remain close to his work and more readily available for the daily demands of the diocese. These early decisions reflected a pastoral style marked by personal simplicity, accessibility, and a determination to be present both to the institutional life of the Church and to those on its margins.

One of Sheen’s early administrative steps was to establish a board of counselors to assist him in governing the diocese. He asked every priest to nominate three fellow priests, and from this broad consultative process he selected a new vicar general in January 1967. He also appointed several priests to serve as regional vicars and to oversee key areas of diocesan administration. Through this structure, Sheen sought not only practical assistance in leadership but also a reliable sounding board, enabling him to stay closely attuned to the concerns and perspectives of both clergy and laity throughout the diocese.

While fully engaged in the demanding work of shepherding the Diocese of Rochester, Sheen continued his longstanding commitment to writing and teaching through the printed word. He maintained his two weekly newspaper columns and continued publishing books; in 1967 alone, four new titles appeared, much of the material drawn from earlier lectures, broadcasts, and retreats but newly framed for a changing Church and society.

Through this sustained writing ministry, Sheen became increasingly attentive to questions of race and to the need for the Church to speak more clearly and credibly to people of color. His reflections show a growing sensitivity to the lived experience of black Americans and a desire to situate their struggles within the larger story of salvation. At one point he speculated that Simon of Cyrene, who helped Christ carry the cross, may have been a black man, using the image to underscore the long and often unrecognized presence of people of African descent within the Christian story. In one of his books from this period, he also included a poem by a black American poet, a small but meaningful sign of his effort to amplify voices not always heard in Catholic devotional writing of the time.

Sheen also turned early attention to priestly formation, introducing a number of significant changes at St. Bernard’s Seminary (which was owned and operated by the diocese) in an effort to respond to emerging pastoral needs and the renewed spirit of the post conciliar Church. He supported the hiring of some non-Catholic professors, reflecting a desire to broaden intellectual engagement and expose seminarians to a wider range of academic perspectives. Psychological testing and screening were introduced in the admissions process, an increasingly common practice at the time, aimed at fostering healthier and more mature candidates for ministry. He also appointed a lay advisory board to assist in the screening and application process (the first in the nation at the time), an innovation that reflected the growing recognition of the laity’s role in the life and discernment of the Church.

At the level of minor (high school) seminary formation, Sheen approved a substantial restructuring of a struggling institution. Its mission was broadened, and it was made co-educational, with the goal of forming lay leaders alongside those discerning priesthood. This reflected a wider post Vatican II emphasis on the shared vocation of all the baptized and the need for well-formed lay leadership in parishes, schools, and diocesan ministries.

His concern for mature Christian commitment also shaped his approach to sacramental practice. Sheen raised the age for Confirmation from the middle school years to the senior year of high school, reasoning that young people needed greater spiritual and personal maturity to receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit as they prepared to enter adult life and serve Christ more consciously in the world. At the time, this was believed to be among the highest Confirmation ages of any diocese.

These initiatives were bold and forward looking, especially in the context of seminary education and sacramental discipline, where patterns had long been stable. While not all of these efforts endured in their original form (what had been the high school seminary closed in 1970), they demonstrate Sheen’s willingness to experiment pastorally and structurally in order to prepare the Church for new realities. 

At the level of spiritual practice, Sheen placed strong emphasis on deepening the interior life of both clergy and laity. He encouraged priests and seminarians to adopt his own long-standing discipline of making a daily Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament, a practice he credited as the spiritual foundation of his ministry. For Sheen, renewal in the Church had to begin not only with structures and programs, but with prayer.

He also urged families to read Sacred Scripture together on a daily basis, seeing the home as a primary place of catechesis and spiritual formation. In a similar pastoral spirit, he permitted and even encouraged priests to celebrate weekday Masses in the homes of parishioners. These “home Masses” were meant to foster a more intimate connection between the Eucharist and family life, and to strengthen the sense of the Church as a community gathered around the Lord in everyday settings.

Sheen himself led by example in this regard, celebrating Mass in private homes throughout the diocese. He made particular efforts to do so in the homes of black and Hispanic Catholics in urban areas, a gesture that reflected both pastoral outreach and his growing desire to ensure that communities who sometimes felt overlooked experienced the closeness and care of their bishop. Mercy Sister Mary Regis, would later recall with particular affection these Masses celebrated by Bishop Sheen in the homes of the people among whom she herself spent much of her life living and serving.

Taken together, these initial efforts of Bishop Sheen as he began his leadership of the Church in Rochester reveal a bishop striving to translate the great themes of the Second Vatican Council into concrete pastoral practice. He combined administrative restructuring and bold experimentation in seminary and sacramental life with a deep insistence on prayer, Eucharistic devotion, and the spiritual renewal of families and clergy. At the same time, he showed growing attentiveness to the social realities of his diocese, particularly questions of race and poverty seeking to be a visible and accessible shepherd in a time of rapid change. 

In the next issue of MISSION, we will explore further dimensions of Sheen’s ministry in Rochester, including the mounting tensions and trials that marked his final years as bishop and ultimately led to his retirement in 1969.