Miracle Investigations for Next Steps in Sheen Canonization

Fulton Sheen was beatified on Wednesday in The Dome at America’s Center, St. Louis, Missouri, by Cardinal Tagle on behalf of Pope Leo XIV.

From Aleteia

By Theresa Civantos Barber

Even as the Church celebrated his beatification, next steps are underway to investigate 6 possible miracles for Fulton Sheen’s canonisation.

While the Church rejoices at the beatification of Fulton Sheen in St. Louis on September 24, the next steps are already underway for his cause for canonization. 

Experts have begun investigating potential miracles to see if one could be confirmed authentic. An approved miracle is the last step needed for Archbishop Sheen to officially be canonized. 

(Quick refresher: Blessed Sheen is at the third of four steps toward canonization. Read here about all the steps before the Catholic Church formally declares someone a saint.)

Possible miracles to be investigated

Monsignor Jason Gray, a canon lawyer and priest who serves as the executive director of the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Foundation and who led the formal investigation into the miracle already attributed to Sheen, shared details at a press conference before the beatification. Bishop Louis Tylka, also of the Diocese of Peoria, and Bonnie Engstrom, mother of the “miracle baby,” joined him for the conversation. 

There are six potential miracles currently under investigation, he said, with two sounding particularly promising, although nothing can be determined until the Church has completed its investigation. He said:

We're looking for a miracle for canonization, and it turns out that, because Pope Francis did authorize the beatification in July of 2019, we actually are able to take anything presented from July 2019 forward as a potential miracle for canonization. 

We actually have six prospective miracles that we're working on now. We're in the process of trying to get them all to supply information because … we have to document everything and then determine which one is the best. 

There's a potential healing from stage four cancer that resolved itself, like, instantaneously. That one sounds pretty good. That's a big deal. There's another one of hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy of a newborn child…

So we have a couple different candidates: one for healing of cancer, another healing of another child. At this point, it's premature to say much more than that, and we'll investigate and leave it in the hands of the Holy See. 

The process to approve a miracle

Many people may not be aware of the incredibly thorough process by which the Church approves a miracle as authentic. The diocese in which the miracle takes place conducts two tribunals: scientific and theological.

The scientific commission must determine that there is no natural explanation for the alleged miracle, and then the theological  commission must rule whether the cure was a miracle in the strict sense — that is, by its nature can only be attributed to God. You can read more here about the rigorous criteria for an authentic miracle.

An unusually unanimous decision

Msgr. Gray described some of the process, sharing the detail that approval of Sheen’s miracle for beatification was unusually unanimous. He said:

Investigation of a miracle means you have to hear witnesses and you have to gather documents. The witnesses include medical experts — the doctors who were involved, the nurses who were involved, and then also the people present … the family and anyone who was present at the birth. 

It also means gathering medical documentation, which is the entire medical file from the midwife who provided care beforehand, the care from OSF St. Francis Medical Center where James was admitted, and then later the follow-up with the pediatricians to determine that he was continuing to meet all the normal benchmarks, that there was no sign of lingering damage from that. 

My job was to gather the information, and then we sent it to Rome. It's reviewed there by Rome by a series of experts, and usually — you have doctors, you have theologians, you have cardinals — and usually one or two of them will vote no. But as long as the majority vote yes, then the cause proceeds. 

The votes in these were all unanimous. The doctors in Rome unanimously approved the miracle. The theologians unanimously approved. The cardinals unanimously approved. It's actually one of the few where that happens. 

Bonnie Engstrom, who of course became intimately familiar with the miracle investigation process through her family’s story, shared her perspective as someone who witnessed it firsthand. At the press conference, she said:

A lot of it was just signing releases that doctors could talk about it. But if I could say, as a laywoman, I was so impressed with how thorough the investigation was … We felt very reassured that, wow, when the Catholic Church says something is a miracle, it is a legit miracle!

As the Church awaits a possible second recognized miracle through Blessed Fulton Sheen’s prayers, and as the miracle investigations are ongoing, you can join the cause with this prayer for the canonization of Fulton Sheen, which was prayed at the end of his beatification Mass.