“Follow that Bishop!”
Follow that Bishop! That’s the title of a documentary released a few weeks ago by Rome Reports TV.
The bishop being followed was Fulton Sheen, and the followers were FBI agents!
According to OSV News, the film was produced in part to support Archbishop Sheen’s cause for sainthood and unveils previously “secret” FBI documents.
OSV also reported, “The FBI file, which the bureau put on its website years ago, has never been much of a secret. It begins in 1943 with an anonymous complaint about a speech the then-monsignor made in which he criticized communism and the Soviet Union, then an American ally in World War II. Sheen had been making such criticisms of Marxist beliefs since the 1930s, and he never modified them during the war. The letter-writer was worried that such remarks could somehow tip the war to the Nazis.
“This led to a meandering report from an FBI informant about the personal activities of an ascetic scholar, turning up such non-scandalous gems as his lack of a social life, fondness for chocolate ice cream and his Holy Hour each morning after awakening at 6 a.m. There also is mention of him once talking a police officer out of giving him a speeding ticket.”
Sheen’s cause for sainthood began in 2002. On June 28, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI announced that the Congregation for the Causes of Saints had recognized Archbishop Sheen's life as one of "heroic virtue," and proclaimed him "Venerable Servant of God Fulton J. Sheen."
An update on Archbishop Sheen’s cause can be found on the Catholic News Agency website here. The trailer for the film can be viewed here. A review of the film by OSV Newsweekly can be found here.
NB: Speaking of “following that bishop,” did you know that the Catholic actor known as Martin Sheen, whose real name is Ramon Antonio Gerardo Estevez, adopted “Sheen” as his stage name due to the influence of the Archbishop’s TV shows? He explains his decision on a YouTube video found here.
And, in 2021, Sheen was interviewed by Sojourners magazine. The article “Why Martin Sheen Returned to Catholicism” can be found here.