Today, Thursday, September 24, 2026, tens of thousands of Catholics are gathering at The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis to witness something Peoria has waited more than six years to see: Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen declared Blessed. Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, representing Pope Leo XIV, presides over the Beatification Mass at 2 p.m. Central, the final step before Sheen could one day be canonized a saint.
Most people remember Fulton Sheen as the Emmy-winning bishop who brought the Gospel into American living rooms through Life Is Worth Living, or as the radio voice of The Catholic Hour that reached millions each week. What fewer people recall is that from 1950 to 1966, Sheen served as National Director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith — the very engine that funded and sustained Catholic missionary work around the globe during some of its most formative decades.
Sheen didn’t just talk about mission. He raised the resources that sent priests, religious, and lay Catholics to serve the poorest and most forgotten corners of the world.
The same spirit that, just a few years earlier led Msgr. Brouwers to respond to requests for lay missionaries, and would give birth to Mission Doctors Association here in Los Angeles.
Sheen had a saying that could easily be a motto for our physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants boarding flights to Uganda, Guatemala, and beyond: “The gift without the giver is bare.” He believed evangelization wasn’t primarily about programs or platforms; it was about presence. About showing up, in person, with love, where the need was greatest.
That’s exactly what our missionaries do. When Dr. Lou Coda treats children in Uganda, or when the Jennings family serves alongside the Church in Guatemala, or Nurse Practitioner, Doris Weaver cares for accident victims in Northern Ghana, they are living out the same conviction that animated Sheen’s entire priesthood: that faith is meant to be carried, not just broadcast.
As Blessed Fulton Sheen takes his place among the Church’s models of holiness, we at Mission Doctors Association give thanks for his witness and we ask his intercession for our missionaries preparing to go, serving now, and returning home changed. May his example remind all of us that the most powerful form of evangelization is still the oldest one: showing up for the poor, in person, with the love of Christ.
Blessed Fulton Sheen, pray for our missionaries.