Fulton Sheen has been dubbed a “Convert Maker.”
Clare Boothe Luce: Clare Boothe Luce was undoubtedly the most prominent Catholic convert associated with Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Luce, at the age of 32, married Henry Luce, publisher of Time and Fortune magazines, and later served two terms in Congress. Known for her glamorous lifestyle and ruthless ambition, she was a frequent subject on the gossip pages before her providential meeting with then-Msgr. Sheen, who was generating millions of listeners to his radio program, The Catholic Hour.
In his memoir, Treasure in Clay, he recalls the evening he invited Congresswoman Luce to dinner.
When the subject turned to religion, Luce, whose only child had recently been killed in a car accident, asked the priest why a good God would take her daughter.
“I answered, ‘In order that through that sorrow, you might be here now starting instructions to know Christ and His Church,’” he said.
Luce then received instruction from Sheen for five months before she was received into the Catholic Church at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City in 1946.
Archbishop Sheen later wrote of Luce, “Never in my life have I been privileged to instruct anyone who was as
